The bids and awards committee (BAC) of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has recommended to the Comelec en banc the consortium of Unison Computer Systems Inc. and NEC of Japan as the winning bidder for the P1.6-billion Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to be used in next year's polls.

AFIS is a thumb mark verification technology that will examine the thumb marks of voters to eliminate double or multiple registrants.

While Unison-NEC consortium did not offer the lowest bid, it was the only bidder which complied with “post qualification procedures,” said Director Jocelyn Pastrado, head of the BAC secretariat.

The AFIS offered by Unison-NEC also satisfied the paper test conducted by the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), Pastrado said.

“Clear ang nakita namin based on the DoST test, kaya we submitted the final recommendations with the chairman last night,” Pastrado said.

BAC finalized the contract for the consortium and forwarded it to Comelec Chairman Jose Melo for review and approval.

During the bidding held last July 19, Unison-NEC submitted a P1.5 billion bid for the P1.6 billion AFIS project while Strategic Alliance Holdings Inc. (SAHI) and its partner-Bangladesh-based TigerIT offered P1.2 billion.

While it offered the lowest bid, SAHI-TigerIT was later disqualified after it failed to comply with the standards and legal requirements set by the Comelec for the AFIS project, Pastrado said.

The BAC said scrutiny of the legal, technical and financial documents of SAHI-TigerIT showed that it failed to comply with the single largest contract (SLC) requirement for the project.

“Based on the post evaluation report submitted by the technical working group to BAC on August 6, 2009, the joint venture of SAHI-TigerIT has failed to comply with the standards and requirements as set in the legal and technical specifications as required in the Bid Documents, thus recommending that the joint venture of SAHI-TigerIT be declared post disqualified,” BAC said.

Experts warn of poll automation dangers Cyber technology experts are not confident the country’s first national automated polls will be successful, saying that hackers and computer virus creators could endanger the multi-billion peso investment in the project.

Speaking at the Balitaan sa Rembrandt forum, computer expert Dante Mara and Deputy National Security Adviser Virtus Gil said government should pour in at least P2 billion more to provide a system that would counteract viruses and hackers.

The two noted that there are numerous ways by which hackers and virus makers could destroy the poll automation program despite assurances made by Smartmatic that their system is foolproof.

“There are 80,000 users who would be allowed to operate the system. It takes only one, two or three of them to damage the system and likewise destroy our dream of making the 2010 electoral exercise fraud-free,” said Gil.

He added: “If we’re talking about computers, there is a virus for it.”