INDUSTRY WATCH
T
he 2019 general elections, set
to go ahead in May this year,
will once again cost the country
hundreds of millions of rands and
involve a massive logistical exercise.
While the IEC does a sterling job in
ensuring free and fair elections, the
resources needed and costs involved in
running South Africa’s elections could
be slashed in future, if South Africa
moved towards more efficient digital
identity, authentication and voting
systems. IEC has been moving in the
right direction, aiming to facilitate more
efficient and secure election processes
using new technologies. However,
measures implemented to date may
not be sufficiently future proof, and the
scrapping of a tender last year may prove
to be positive in the long run – allowing
South Africa to extend its vision beyond
what was initially envisaged.
There are three key areas where the
voting process can harness next-
generation technologies to support more
secure, efficient and cost-effective voting.
Voter registration, supported by advanced
biometric-based voter registration,
accurately enrols and geolocates voters
in real time, automatically updating the
voters’ roll.
Voter identification at polling stations,
using biometric-based identification to
authenticate voters and automatically
check them against the voters’ roll.
Voting, using biometric identification
to log on to a portal or terminal and
electronically casting a vote. E-voting
allows for near real-time tallies and highly
effective election monitoring.
In many countries, one or two of these
processes may be digitised, already
delivering significant cost savings and
efficiencies. But only when a country
harnesses advanced biometrics and
digital processes across all three areas of
the voting process can the full benefits
of these technologies be realised. With
only months until the next election,
South Africa has missed the opportunity
to make the 2019 general election as
efficient and cost effective as possible.
www.intelligentcio.com
Ideco CEO Marius Coetzee
However, now is the ideal time for the
country to start building out a strategy to
deliver a cheaper, more efficient election
process next time around.
Instead of looking to African digital
electoral systems leaders such as Ghana,
South Africa should be benchmarking
itself against world innovators such as
Estonia, which some years ago built on
digital identities to enable a fully electronic
voting system that allows voters to cast
their ballots over the internet. Despite
some debate around the potential risks,
Estonia’s e-voting system has been found
to be highly cost-effective and efficient.
To implement an election system on par
with that of Estonia, South Africa should
first consider a review of the Electoral Act,
which still prevents the implementation
of a fully automated first world voting
process. We also need to focus on an
identity programme that provides each
citizen with a secure and trusted digital
identity token, which forms the basis of
a next generation voting system. With
these factors addressed, South Africa
would be well-placed to implement a
fully digital, automated voting system
ahead of the next elections – going
from procurement to deployment in a
few short years, and delivering a system
that simplifies voting for citizens, slashes
costs for the state, and delivers results
practically in real time, within a 100%
secure system. n
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