I propose to take Questions Nos. 368, 389 and 390 together.
In evaluating the tenders received for the provision of an electronic voting and counting system, my Department availed of expert practical and technical advice from returning officers and from the Local Government Computer Services Board; €42,029.96 was paid to the board for its assistance both during the tendering process and in the development and testing of the electronic voting system.
Since the selection of the Nedap-Powervote system in December 2000, the Department has engaged the following independent and internationally accredited testing companies, institutes and companies to assess and review the various elements of the system: Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt, PTB, the German national test institute which undertook a code review of the embedded software in the voting machine, and also assessed the functionality of the machine, including addressing the absolute correspondence between pressing a preference button and registering the appropriate preference in the ballot module; TNO, an ISO EN accredited Dutch firm which conducted extensive environmental testing, electromagnetic, power surges, etc., on the voting machine and equipment; KEMA, another accredited Dutch firm which certified the physical and safety aspects of the voting machine; Electoral Reform Services, the UK company which specialises in single transferable vote count rule testing and which ran functional tests to verify that the system implements the PR-STV count rules properly; PMI Software and Nathean Technologies Limited, Irish software companies which undertook architecture assessments and source code reviews of the election management and count software; and Zerflow Information Security, an Irish firm which undertook an assessment on the physical threats to the voting machine in polling stations. The reports of these testing agencies and companies were published and the test results were positive.
Payments made are set out in the following table.
Agency/Company
|
2001
|
2002
|
2003
|
2004
|
|
€
|
€
|
€
|
€
|
PTB
|
28,121.05
|
964.06
|
21,735.75
|
—
|
TNO
|
18,836.32
|
—
|
28,281.50
|
—
|
KEMA
|
3,000
|
2,500
|
—
|
—
|
ERS
|
—
|
24,692.42
|
33,532.72
|
2,175.35
|
PMI/Nathean
|
48,241.44
|
29,235.46
|
52,390.58
|
72,372.52
|
Zerflow
|
—
|
4,040
|
—
|
—
|