Oslo Commissions Indra's E-counting Technology once again for its 2011 Local Elections

Oslo City Council has commissioned Indra once more the management of the scrutiny of the local elections and 15 district councils to be held on September 12th. The contract amounts to 2.1 million Euros.
The solution to be implemented is based on its e-counting system which counts votes by automatically identifying the voter’s intention and only requires human intervention to solve incidents. Thanks to state-of-the-art technologies the system is capable of recognising either marks or handwritten text.

The requirements of an automated counting solution such as “e-counting” guarantee transparence, reliability and quality of results. According to The Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy 2010, Norway tops the ranking which measures the state of democracy in 165 countries all over the world. Therefore, the employment of Indra’s solution in its elections represents one of the biggest challenges in electoral modernisation. The Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.

This contract represents the fifth electoral process-2005 and 2009 parliamentary elections and municipal elections in 2003 and 2009- carried out in Norway by Indra with this technology. The IT company is the only foreign company to deliver elections in Norway.

This time, Indra will provide all the polling places and anticipated vote centres with equipment to consult the electronic census. The technology multinational will undertake the scanning, electronic count of ballots with e-counting, printing and distribution of 6.5 million ballot papers, logistics processes, the electronic census system for the anticipated vote points distributed across the city and the system and definition of procedures for the opening of the anticipated vote polls in addition to the elaboration of the post-electoral analysis.

Indra’s “e-counting” includes training of the operators and the secure storage of results, calculation of the scrutiny and transmission of results.

This electronic count system increases reliability and transparence of the vote count since it reduces human error. It employs high-speed scanners equipped to processes 120 ballot papers per minute and combines different automatic recognition technologies for forms, marks, barcodes and printed characters.

Leadership in electoral processes
 
Indra has participated in more than 300 successful electoral processes worldwide involving more than 2.000 million voters and has been pioneer in the use of new technologies with solutions such as: PDA's, Electronic Vote, e-Counting, Internet Voting, CAE or solutions and services for  citizen participation like the iPARTICIPA platform.

For the last years Indra has delivered elections in countries such as: UK, Norway, France, Slovenia, Portugal, Italy, USA, Argentina and Angola, among others offering all sorts of services and electoral solutions besides implementing innovative electronic vote systems. Moreover, the company gave thorough support to the recent elections to the parliaments of Catalonia and Galicia; Andalusia’s regional elections; European Parliament, legislative elections in Argentina and presidential elections in Colombia. Once more, it was also awarded the scrutiny and communication of results of the municipal elections in Spain on May 22nd. 

Indra

Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to investment in R&D with nearly € 500 M during the last three years. In 2010 revenues reached € 2,557 M of which a 40% came from the international market. The company employs more than 30,000 professionals and has clients in more than 100 countries.