Scottish Government has selected Canadian IT company CGI to deliver electronic vote counting system to be used in 2017 Scottish Local Government elections to held in May.
As part of the £6.5m deal, the company will provide end-to-end services, software and technical infrastructure and extends to all 32 Scottish Local Authorities.
The latest contract follows the delivery of the electronic vote counting system for the 2012 Scottish elections by the company.
Scottish Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment Marco Biagi said: "In carrying out the procurement exercise, the Scottish Government worked closely with our partners in local government to ensure a robust and transparent competition.
"Following on from the success of electronic counting in the 2012 local government elections, the Scottish Government will work with CGI to build on the past experience to deliver an effective and transparent e-counting system which will meet all expectations."
Scotland will conduct simultaneous election of around 1,200 councillors in 353 wards across Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities in 2017 election.
As per the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system Local Government elections, the electorates have to cast their votes for every candidate in order of preference.
The system developed by CGI will help in removing the complexity as the manual counting of ballot papers can take between three and four days.
CGI will deploy its e-counting solution developed by its Glasgow-based partner Idox which will help in scanning ballot papers in just minutes which would have otherwise taken hours.
CGI Public sector director of operations in Scotland Maggie Morrison said: "The next 12 months will be of vital importance as we engage in a robust testing regime of the e-counting system in advance of the elections in 2017.
"This is also a great example of CGI working closely with our local Scottish SME partners, including hardware provider Dacoll, based in Bathgate, and our training partner Rathmhor, based in Linlithgow.
"Together, our very best teams will work closely with Local Authority partners to undertake a huge amount of planning, testing and training ahead of the crunch election period."
