Election 1999: A technological feat

The numbers are quite simply awful. Some 600 PCs, 25 servers, 35km of cabling, 3km fiber optics, 120 fax lines connected to 15 high speed printers and 45 000 incoming telephone calls over 2 000 telephone points. And that is only for the Election Results Centre.

"People have said that this looks more like mission control at NASA than a part of Africa," says Howard Sackstein, Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) executive director of the call centre "pit" where results are tallied. This command post for the election process was based on the Australian model of centralised control, but apparently went far beyond that technology-wise. An Australian delegate reportedly walked into the centre and asked: "How can we ever match this?"

The inspiration for the logistical nightmare that the 1999 election process became, the IEC says, was the 1994 event. Two crucial mistakes were made then, and the commission vowed never to repeat them. The first was the 16 hours some voters had to spend queuing for a chance to make their cross; the second was the nine days it took to process the results. These delays, the IEC decided, would have to be cut.

The answer? Technology. A nationwide wide area network had to be set up, but many rural areas did not have access to basic telephone services. So satellite dishes were installed, powered by generators where no electricity could be provided.

IEC officials had to be able to effectively manage the entire process, so a nerve centre was set up to gather every piece of information and present it to the decision-makers. Verified results had to be available soon, so incoming faxes were electronically displayed to professional data capturers right next to their input forms.

Data security was a very important consideration from the outset. The alleged hacking of the results system in 1994, whether fact or urban legend, delayed the entire counting process and made some question the end result.

This time around a specialist security firm was called in to attempt penetration of the electronic defenses, and given a week to do their worst, says Pierre Dalton of Andersen Consulting, which co-ordinated the entire process for the IEC. They had no luck from outside of the Election Centre at the Pretoria show grounds, he says, but found things a bit easier from inside the building. But access to that building was strictly controlled.

If any would-be assailants did manage to get into the building, a surprise would be waiting for them, says Bill Renaud of Microsoft SA. Even though in charge of the Microsoft team at the centre and therefore the software applications, he received a call from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), demanding to know what he was doing on the network. The NIA apparently checked the security log on a regular basis to spot any untoward usage.

Then there is the potential threat to the physical hardware. To safeguard the data in the system it was exactly mirrored at the IEC headquarters.

Andersen Consulting says that switching over to the secondary system would be so seamless that few outside the server room would notice. And in a worst case scenario the data could be recovered from a secure disaster recovery site, the location of which is still known only to a handful of officials. "If you find out where it is, let me know," says Dalton of Anderson, the man in charge.

Where does the buck stop?

All of this costs money, and money was certainly made. No one is willing to put a figure to the amount of money spent on this elaborate IT system, but it is thought to have been a large chunk of the IEC budget.

Klaas Lammers of Datacentrix says his company alone completed projects worth R50 million for providing hardware and networking infrastructure. And there is the R3 million worth of software donated by Microsoft, not to mention the hardware requirements filled by Hewlett-Packard.

But for all the preparation in the world technology remains a fickle thing, and mistakes were made. The system is said to have crashed twice during the first two dry runs, the first time due to system overload and the second because of a glitch at the Hartebeeshoek satellite ground station. Both problems were soon sorted out, and whether due to the competence of techies or their fervent prayers, the big day itself went off without a hitch. "We did something magnificent here," says Dalton, barely able to contain his emotions. "We allowed democracy to continue."

Much of the hardware will be sold in bulk to recover some of the costs, including the 600 PCs at the Election Centre. But the infrastructure will stay in place and will be built on, the IEC says. It will be of immediate use in the upcoming local elections, and will provide a vital link for communities which had little contact with the outside world before.

"We are a permanent body and we have put permanent infrastructure in place," says the IEC`s Sackstein. "And apart from that people have gained valuable skills. I don`t think we have a hope in hell of taking that away from them now."

That training, everyone agrees, will be the lasting legacy. Andersen Consulting says that it trained between 2 000 and 2 500 people in two-and-a-half weeks, no mean feat in itself. As Dalton puts it: "Many of these people never touched a computer before. Now they have at least basic skills. We are very proud of that."