IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo.
The Electoral Commission (IEC) has opened its hi-tech national operations centre ahead of the 4 November municipal elections.
Housed at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, the National Results Operations Centre (ROC) serves as the primary management hub for electoral operations and the central hub for result dissemination via portals and television stations.
A new high of 29.2 million South Africans are registered on the voters’ roll to elect local government leadership at next Wednesday’s elections.
Officially opening the centre yesterday, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo emphasised that the launch of the results centre represents a commitment to “electoral transparency, integrity and technological readiness”.
To facilitate the electoral process, the ROC is powered by digital infrastructure from Telkom, with Openserve’s national fibre network forming a key component of the initiative.
According to Mamabolo, the electoral commission will utilise a new Windows 11 platform with associated applications to aggregate voter choices.
“The result system is a technical embodiment of the political choices of the electorate. It is the aggregator of the will of the voter. As such, the result system assumes cardinal importance in relaying electoral outcomes.”
To ensure the centre’s system is functionally robust and cyber security resilient, Mamabolo said it has been independently tested and audited.
He added that issues were identified during the audit process, noting these have since been successfully remediated. “The result system is hereby declared ready and fit for purpose.”
Mamabolo further revealed that five political parties participated in an audit of the results system between 8 and 12 October.
“No material findings are reported from this stream of review of the results system. This layer of political oversight strengthens our electoral integrity. The transmission mechanism and the eventual display of results on the leaderboard forms an integral part of the results architecture.
“The results process must breed on both lands of clearness and accuracy. Realising one at the expense of the other would evacuate an operation division. Such a prospect will indeed negate the voluntary aspirations of electoral integrity. Necessarily, technical optimisations have been implemented to ensure rapidity, and secure continuance and uninterrupted projection of results to the various leaderboards and other public channels, such as the mobile app and the website.”
Inside the IEC’s national results operation centre in Midrand.
Mamabolo revealed the upcoming local elections also see the introduction of a virtual results operation centre, which will allow political party officials and stakeholders to access results and associated reports remotely from any location.
The innovation, he added, is geared towards increasing the transparency envelope. “This must serve to reinforce the integrity of these local government elections.”
He noted that the voter management devices (VMDs) are a crucial component of the technical architecture in the electoral process.
As a result, the IEC is deploying an additional fleet of 14 000 voter management devices to improve operational efficiency at highly-populated voting stations.
“This technology of the VMD must not impair voting experience but must serve to improve that experience and operational efficiency.”
These technical interventions are intended to improve the voter experience by reducing the time taken to cast a ballot, he stated. “The applications and the voters’ roll application has also been subjected to a course review, loads and functional testing.
“We have done all the necessary for an incredible electoral process. We are now waiting for the first ballot to be cast,” Mamabolo concluded.
