The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) yesterday - 12 February 2008 - issued the Special Allocation Release Order (SARO) for the automation of the August 11, 2008 elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The SARO was for the amount of PhP 867,329,000, according to Commission on Elections spokesman James Jimenez.

"This means we can initiate the bidding process," Jimenez explained, adding that the bid documents will be made available to prospective bidders on February 14, 2008. "In honor of that day, we are considering having the Requests for Proposal bound in red," Jimenez quipped.

The Request for Proposal is a technical description of the automated election system. "The RFP for the automation of the ARMM elections was drafted in close coordination with the Advisory Council and bears the Council's stamp of approval," Jimenez said. "In fact, the RFP was prepared following the Council's recommendation that the ARMM elections should be fully automated using both Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), and Optical Mark Reader (OMR) technology."

The Advisory Council is the body of expert advisers created by Republic Act 9369 that is tasked to recommend to the COMELEC which technology to use for the automation of elections. Its members include the Chairman of the Commission on Information Communication Technology, representatives from the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Education, a representative from the academe, representatives from IT professional organizations and from non-governmental electoral reform organizations.