Meet the man behind the mobile results App
For days after Fijians cast their votes in the 2018 General Elections, many people downloaded and checked the Fijian Elections Office results mobile App to keep track of the progress of counting. Meet the man who developed the FEO results mobile application, Vijendra Singh. Born and bred in Suva, Mr Singh is a former student of Rishikul Sanatan College, Nasinu, and holds a Master’s Degree in Computing Science and Information Systems from the University of the South Pacific.
On Sunday after the announcement of the election results, Mr Singh was acknowledged by the Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem, for his work.
“I think the 2018 General Election has gone down in history as one of the most heavily-contested elections, of course, much like every other,” he said.
“But a little bit more this time and the star of the show has been the Fijian Elections Office results App.
“When I had this idea Vijen took it up as a hobby and said I would do it in my spare time and he did so.”
Mr Singh has eight years of experience in the IT sector and began his career with FEO in 2015 when he joined as an Analyst Programmer.
“Developing software has always been a passion and I took Software Engineering to specialise in this field,” Mr Singh said. He has developed several desktop and web-based apps and software throughout his career with the Judicial Department and FEO.
Among his notable work as an app developer is developing the Case Management Systems for the Magistrate and High Courts, a Human Resource and Leave Management System, a Trust Fund Reconciliation System that is used to reconcile receipts and payments for the various trust accounts.
He also developed the Party Registration System that was used to digitise all political party records and information and the Polling Venue Locator app that enables users to visually see polling venues and locate their venue using their voter number. The FEO Results App is the first app that he developed that has been successfully launched live.
“I feel humbled by the experience. It was a challenge for me to develop it for this election,” Mr Singh said.
“My goal now is to further improve the interface and include more features to the app so that for the next election it is more dynamic and is able to provide more information for the voters in real time.”
He said when the conception of the project came about, he was already tied up with various projects within FEO. “Developing the App was not possible during work hours. Outsourcing the project was an alternative, however I wanted to develop the App and I had challenged myself that I could develop it and I managed to convince management that I would develop it in my spare time.
So, I started working on it after work and weekends.”
He believes that dissemination of results is an integral part of any election.
“It was the SOE’s vision to provide results in a convenient manner and give voters direct access to the results. Thus, we pursued to develop an App which users could download on their mobile devices and be able to get updates.”