KPU system held responsible for tardy vote count

KPU system held responsible for tardy vote count

JAKARTA (JP): With no end in sight to the vote tally,
telecommunications experts have blamed the system deployed by the
General Elections Commission (KPU).

A telecommunications expert from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada
University, Roy Suryo, said the data processing system used by
KPU was flawed.

"The problem lies with the Centralized Network System used by
KPU to obtain poll results from the polling places nationwide,"
he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He said with the KPU system, results from all polling places
were transmitted hierarchically before arriving at the KPU's data
center.

"Results from the polling places must go through the
subdistrict stations, the regency stations and then be tabulated
at provincial stations before they can be downloaded at the data
center."

The hierarchical process of data transmission has created a
long queue of customers, including KPU officials, observers,
journalists and the public, eager to secure access to the poll
results, he said.

Roy said the long queue of customers could have been averted
if KPU had chosen a modern data processing system.

"Technically speaking, the Centralized Network System is
already out of date. A modern system that can solve the queuing
problem is the Distributed Network System."

He said the distributed system eliminated the current system's
glitches, including the long queue of customers to access the
poll results, as results could be obtained from several servers
provided by the system.

Protracted waiting times could also be avoided as people could
access the information from all over the world, he added.

Sudjana Sapi'ie, the executive director of the Rectors Forum,
a local poll watchdog, blamed the slow tally on the processing
system.

"Transmission of the poll results must go through bureaucratic
procedures before they can be accessed in the data center," he
said.

However, he said, the slow tally could also be caused by the
"hierarchical" verification mechanism at every level of data
transmission.

"We must admit that caution, though implicating slow data
transmission, must be maintained in a bid to make sure the
election is honestly and fairly organized," he said.

Basuki Suhardiman, the man in charge of the computer network
at the Rectors Forum had said it would have been better to use
the network of PT Telkom which reaches regencies.

Director of Operations of the Australian Electoral Commission
Ross Mackay, at the opening of the media center last month, said
the center would receive results from Indonesian electoral
officials at 4,000 subdistricts and would process the information
as soon as it was received.

He said votes must be counted at each of the 250,000 polling
places, and the results are taken to villages for collation
before being transmitted to subdistricts for further matching.

He said results would be transmitted to the center by
facsimile or by phone, including cellular phones, and by single
side band radios in some isolated areas. All the data was to be
keyed into 60 computers using an election results program
developed specifically for the election, he said.

"Although the results will be made available as they are
received, significant quantities of data will not be available
until 24 to 36 hours after the voting stops on June 7," he said
at the time.

Senior Media Advisor of the International Foundation for
Election Systems Hank Valentino, said Wednesday that the slow
process was because of necessary verification of data.

He had said at the opening of the center last month that the
official tabulation process would begin by counting at each
polling place. The information would then be delivered to each
higher level for consolidation and transmission.

He said the scheduled release of the official results was June
28 for regency legislative councils, July 1 for provincial
legislative councils and July 6 for the national House of
Representatives (DPR). (43/imn)