Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 May 2004
368 Mr. P. McGrath asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if, in the context of his statements to Dáil Éireann concerning the independent testing of the proposed electronic voting system, he will outline the individuals or companies which he commissioned to carry out this testing; the payments made for this testing; and if he did not commission this testing, will he give the source of his Dáil statement. [13417/04]
View answer389 Mr. P. McGrath asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the firms of consultants or experts, the computer manufacturers and individual electronic specialists engaged by his Department in each of the past five years to advise on the proposed introduction of electronic voting; and the payments made to each in each of those years. [13409/04]
View answer390 Mr. P. McGrath asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if, in the context of his statements concerning the proposed electronic voting system, he will detail the person who had conducted the independent testing of the systems; the context in which these companies or individuals were engaged; the fees paid for this testing; and if he will comment on whether he received value for money for this expenditure. [13410/04]
View answerI 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 |
— |
— |
