Comelec: Source code review starts today

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced that the review process of the source code which will be used in the automated election system (AES) for the 2016 polls will get underway today.

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim said the poll body is set to sign the 35-million contract with SLI Global Solutions (Systems Lab, Inc./ Systest Labs) to review this afternoon the human readable electronic instructions for the AES, which will be provided by SmartmaticTotal Information Management (TIM) Corporation.

“Hopefully, we can sign it on Friday, 2 p.m. SmartmaticTotal Information Management Corporation will turn over to us the base source code, which we will turn over to Systest Labs,” Lim said.

The base source code is the unaltered version of the AES instructions.

Comelec decided to award the contract to SLI after it submitted a bid, which is US$80,000 lower than its competitors during the limited source bidding held by its Technical Evaluation Committee.

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista also said the prior experience of the SLI in reviewing the source code of the AES used during 2010 and 2013 polls also became a factor in picking the USbased company.

“Their price offer is lower, they are already familiar (with the source code)... That’s why we chose them,” Bautista said.

Comelec is set to hold another review of the same source code on Feb. 2016 after it has been modified to the specifications of the AES for the May 2016 polls.