Business and Finance

It's Not A Rocket Launch, It's The Election

The Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
June 4, 1999
By David Shapshak

Johannesburg - You can't help feeling as if someone is on the verge of
saying: "Houston, we have a problem."

The main auditorium of the Pretoria showground has been commandeered by the
Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and transformed into a hi-tech
election nerve centre, complete with the buzz akin to Nasa-like rocket
launches.

More accustomed to hosting the annual Pretoria Fair, where cattle auctions
and dog shows are common, the showground looks like the control centre for
a space shuttle launch.

Rows of computers face two huge screens displaying the election results,
tabulated into national and provincial returns, that would otherwise be
tracking a satellite's trajectory.

Stretching out in the main auditorium are some 600 computers where busy IEC
technicians are inputting, collating, checking and verifying election
results from around the country.

The operation is equivalent to a medium- to large-sized bank, using around
3 000 desktop computers and a leading-edge satellite system to relay and
process the computer data.

The information technology infrastructure that powers the election results
is impressive, to say the least. The idea for the centre was gleaned from
Australia, but improved on tremendously, says one of the consultants who
worked on its organisation.

It begins at the polling station, where votes are counted, then phoned
through to the Pretoria results centre. It is also taken to the local
electoral officer, where it is both faxed and "captured" in digital form.
The data is then uploaded via 450 satellite dishes, downloaded and relayed
to the results centre.

The information is "verified" using three information media: the phone
call, fax and digital data.

Setting up the 12 000m2 results centre required an extra cellular tower and
a microwave tower, used for high power telecommunications transmissions, as
well as 2 000 telephone lines, 120 fax lines and 30km of computer cable.

The satellite-based wide area network that the entire country-system uses
is advanced enough to run a medium-sized business. It is an innovative
stroke, freeing the IEC's communication infrastructure from any
telecommunications problems that might befall it, and extending its reach
into the country's rural heartland where phone lines are a rarity.

But almost two years before the showground got its hi-tech look, the IEC
began mapping the country using another sophisticated satellite technology.
The Global Information System software package was originally developed in
South Africa and the IEC set out dividing, or delimiting, the country into
about 14 500 voting districts, where the voters would cast their ballots.

Howard Sackstein, the IEC executive director responsible for the election
centre and the results, said: "This is the largest logistic operation the
country has ever seen. To keep track of 261 000 staff in nearly 15 000
centres, is such a difficult task. It seems to have worked remarkably
well."

As ever in South Africa, the ironies abound. Next to the centre is the
Skilpad Saal (Tortoise Hall), the site of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging
leader Eugene Terre'Blanche's historic address in 1989 to 6 000 people, and
is usually home to the local wrestling fraternity.

"Ventersdorp, we have a problem," doesn't quite have the same ring.
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Copyright (c) 1999 Mail and Guardian. Distributed via Africa News Online
(www.africanews.org).