French firm wins bid for IEBC tender

IEBC Commissioner Dr Paul Kurgat inspecting voter registration kits in Eldoret during the mass vote registration exercise

French firm wins bid for IEBC tender

The IEBC has said it will comply with the Public Procurement Administrate Review Board’s orders to conclude the process of awarding a Sh3 billion tender to a French firm.

The tender for the installation of an Integrated Elections Management System for the August 8 polls was awarded to Gemalto SA.

IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba has written to firms that submitted bids, saying the commission will proceed to undertake a financial evaluation as directed by the board chaired by lawyer Paul Gicheru.

The system will integrate the existing biometric voter registration, the biometric voter identification, the electronic results transmission and the political party and candidate registration systems.

The system is a key component of the technology IEBC is supposed to deploy to ensure the entire electoral process is transparent, secure, verifiable, reliable and highly available during voter registration, candidate registration, and voter verification and results transmission.

Already, voter registration has been done without it and it may not be possible for the IEBC to procure the system before the start of voter verification on May 20. When the IEBC opened the tender last month, the technical team knocked off all other bidders on technical grounds leaving Gemalto SA.

On February 28, IEBC made a decision to terminate the tender so that it can invite fresh bids.

However, before the IEBC restarted the procurement, one of the bidders – Avante International Technology – went to the Review Board and challenged the IEBC decision to terminate the tender.

Source:http://www.the-star.co.ke/