“How can a company which is practically broke handle a project whose original budget has been set at P465 million?”
Would you want to vote for public officials via the internet?
It’s a tantalizing prospect, but it would soon be available only for Filipinos overseas.
Any way you look at it, this is a welcome development as it would no doubt increase the turnout of Filipino voters abroad.
The Commission on Elections has begun the process of making online voting a reality.
It already conducted a first round of bidding but this failed as the two bidders were not able to submit the required documents.
A second round of bidding was held April 2, 2024. Four bidders were present, but two of them were deemed ineligible: AMA-Kevoting and Indra Sistemas.
Two others were deemed eligible, ePLDT-ebizolution-Voatz JV, which submitted a bid of P435.5 million, and Sequent-SMS GT JV, with a bid of price of P112 million.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
For one thing, Sequent’s bid of P112 million was not even one-fourth of the Comelec’s earmarked budget of P465 million for the exercise.
For another, this bidder appears to have no experience in a government election, no technical compliance and no adequate finances.
Observers wondered how this P112 million bid can cover the costs of cloud computing hosting for several months, an alternate back-up server, full cyber security measures, biometric authentication licenses, 24/7 technical support to voters worldwide, laptops and printers for every embassy and consulate, among many other requirements.
The Comelec conducted extensive market research to set the overall project budget, and two more experienced vendors set their offer much closer to their budget.
If the poll body had asked any of the reputable cloud computing and data security providers in the country, it should have realized that P112M will not even cover the cost of cloud services.
And then there’s the information available on the Delaware Department of State website showing that Sequent is a tax delinquent, owing taxes from their last filed annual report.
This should have deemed them not eligible to get a tax clearance in the Philippines.
There are also reports its tax filings show a paltry income for 2022 of only $278,800 and an operating loss of $94,518.
How can a company which is practically broke handle a project whose original budget has been set at P465 million?
During their public demos published on-line on Comelec’s Facebook page, Sequent failed to meet the requirements in Comelec’s terms of reference (ToR).
Sequent also failed to use the configuration data provided by Comelec to all vendors.
When their system needed to print some of the reports, such as ERs and certificate of votes, the positions and information on the printouts did not match what the Comelec requested.
Sequent insisted some of the features are due for future customization, but Comelec was very clear that those features needed to be present during post-qualification testing as per Annex K of the ToR.
More alarmingly, one of the key requirements is the system must have been audited by a legitimate third-party certifying agent.
Sequent not only failed to show this certification but admitted their system is open-source and therefore auditable by anyone.
This disregards the very specific requirement of the Comelec ToR.
The firm also lacked a certificate from a government electoral authority that their system has been used before.
In the ToR, Comelec specifically said: “This requirement will ensure that the first online voting in the Philippines will not be a testing ground for any of the prospective bidders. This requirement will also ensure that only those capable of running a secured online voting will be used.”
Sequent, however, only presented certificates from private companies that have licensed their system to conduct online elections for private companies, unions or universities, and merely mentioned a referendum in Madrid.
The company claimed those private companies are their “affiliates” and failed to show one single government election project.
The poll body clearly requested a certification from a government electoral authority that the system was used to elect public officials on a binding election.
There’s more. Sequent is said to have no ISO 14001 certificate, nor its equivalent, another key requirement of the Comelec.
During the postqualification phase, there were reports the Technical Evaluation Committee had serious concerns regarding the non-compliance of this company with the requirements.
Hence, the industry could not help but express shock when the Special Bids and Committee recently sent a communication to all bidders announcing their last-minute recommendation to award the project to this questionable vendor. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)