eVoting Tender

Right2Vote Infotech Private Limited is in the business of providing an eVoting technology platform for managing online elections. We come across many clients who come out with a Tender / Request for Proposal / Bidding Document for the availing of eVoting services. This document is to help guide them in the process of tendering.

Be clear about the objective: Why do you want to go the tender route rather than direct selection?

Many organisations go through the process of tendering without giving it a thought. You must know what you want to achieve. It can be one or more of the following:

1. To meet the rules and guidelines of your organisation
2. Select technically the best platform
3. To get the lowest price

To meet the rules and guidelines of your organisation

Many organisations, especially government organisations and public sector entities, have rules that all procurement must be done through a tender to ensure the best price discovery and avoid any financial fraud or favouritism. Tendering wastes a lot of time and costs for both the client and the eVoting agencies. Hence, the following should be explored:

1. Low Contract Value: Generally, each organisation’s tendering guidelines also provide an exemption from the tendering process if the value of the contract is too low. Check the limit in your organisation. Generally speaking, no quality eVoting service provider would be interested in participating in a tender where the tender value is less than Rs. One Lakh. If you go ahead with a tender for a low-value contract, you will lose out on good service providers.
2. Empanelment: It is generally better to empanel a few eVoting agencies which meet the technical criteria. Then you can have a simple price bid and decide on the vendor. It will save you a lot of time and money. Reverse eAuction is very efficient for this purpose.
3. GeM and other similar portals: To expedite the process of procurement, the Government of India has set up the Government eMarketplace or the GeM portal. The client should use such price discovery portals for faster and cheaper procurement.

Shortlist the technically best platform first

eVoting is a very critical service as it enables the selection of the top management of the organisation. Top management determines the vision and direction of the organisation, and hence selecting cheap, uncertified and non-secure eVoting platforms would be penny-wise pound-foolish.

Most organisations do not know what to look for in an eVoting platform. People either keep it too open-ended or make it too detailed. Nothing can be worse than a badly drafted Request For Proposal (RFP). If you are drafting an eVoting RFP or any other RFP, you should keep it simple and short. But at the same time, have 3-4 critical parameters on which the technical proposal would be evaluated. The parameters should be specific and should not be open to interpretation. We recommend the following parameters:

TECHNICAL PARAMETERS FOR eVOTING VENDOR SELECTION

1. Certification
   1. The eVoting platform should be certified for quality and security by the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India. Here, it is important to note that STQC certification should include functional testing, GIGW parameters, MCA parameters, web application security, network security and cloud security. Only an OSWAP top 10 or such a 5-10 parameter test certificate from STQC is not a real eVoting quality and security certificate. STQC tests eVoting platforms on more than 500 parameters.
   2. ISO-27001 certification
   3. Approved by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), Government of India

This will ensure that a platform tested and certified by experts is only able to participate.

2. Experience
   1. Should have experience of managing more than 1000 elections
   2. Should have experience of managing elections for more than 5 years
   3. Should have experience of handling elections of your size (number of voters – say 25,000 voters)

This will ensure that all fly-by-night operators are excluded.

3. Features

Depending on your requirements, you should also stipulate the features required. Our recommended list is:

Mandatory

1. Secret ballot – Individual voter’s vote details should not be accessible to anybody, including the eVoting agency.
2. Audit trail – IP address and time of voting of each voter should be provided for audit purposes.
3. Voter Receipt – A receipt should be sent to voters as soon as the voting is done for their confidence.
4. End-to-end encryption
5. OTP based authentication

Optional

1. Voter Selfie
2. Result Multi-key
3. Unique IP address
4. Two-factor authentication
5. Geo-tagging
6. Geo-fencing
7. Face recognition

4. Data hosting in India

As per the government of India guidelines, most organisations are required to store the data in India. Ensure the service provider confirms this in writing.

What to Avoid

You should avoid the following, as it does not add any value to you as a client but increases the cost for the vendor and hence increases the chances of their dropping out.

1. Earnest Money Deposit (EMD): It is better to hold back payment of 10% of the service charge till the end of the election rather than asking for EMD. EMD does not add any value for the client. It also increases the processing cost, time and effort for both client and vendor. Vendors find the process of getting a refund of EMD very painful, and many times do not bid due to this reason. No business likes its working capital stuck in non-productive uses.

2. Performance Guarantee (PG): Performance Guarantee (PG) is more relevant where the vendor is supposed to build a new product. PG does not add any value for the client. It only makes the banks richer. In elections, there is one winner and ten losers. There are high chances of losers non accepting the result gracefully. There are also chances of wasteful and endless litigation. The litigation is generally not due to the fault of the vendor but the ego of the losing party. In such cases, PG gets stuck. Hence, no eVoting agency would like to submit a PG.

3. Bank statements and financial reports: Bank statements and financial reports are confidential data of any organisation. Asking for those documents is unfair. Would you share your bank statements and financial reports with the vendors? The vendor is more worried about whether you are capable of making payment and should ask for your financial statements.

4. Contact details of the other customers: Any vendor should not share contact details of their clients with anybody else. Would you like it if vendors started sharing your mobile number and email ID with other potential clients? Imagine hundreds of people calling you to understand the eVoting process, technicalities, various features of the platform, your experience during the election, etc. Are you willing to entertain such calls? STQC certification is done by experts, which should be enough. No point calling other customers who are not experts.

5. One-sided contracts: Nobody likes one-sided contracts. A good service provider would either build up the cost in the tender value or not participate. Neither scenario is in the interest of the client.

6. Multiple meetings, demos, trials, etc.: STQC certification has already taken care of testing. There is no need for multiple meetings, trials and demos. When you are getting a new software made customised for yourself, then only you need multiple testing, trials and demos. In that case, you should hire an expert agency like STQC to do that for you and should not do it yourself. Generally, in organisations where the decision-making process is muddy, multiple people get involved in vendor selection and repeatedly ask the same questions. That frustrates good vendors. They then either build it up in the cost or drop out.

To get the lowest price

Tendering generally does not lead to the lowest price. The process of tender is a time-consuming and costly affair for the vendors. Hence, the vendor is forced to build in the cost of participating in the tender process in the tender value. And as the success rate is low in tenders, the vendor is forced to build in 5x-10x the cost of participating in a tender in the tender value. To recover the cost of unsuccessful tenders, also. It is a lose-lose deal for both parties.

An even bigger risk is that good vendors are too busy serving their customers and do not have time to waste on bid participation. Most RFPs are drafted by non-professionals, who have limited technical knowledge of eVoting, and hence, vendors find replying to such RFP a total waste of time and resources.

It is always better to review the websites of the top 3-4 vendors in the business of eVoting. First check for technical parameters like STQC certification. Once you are comfortable with the technical capabilities, then check the pricing page on the website. Any good vendor would be transparent and would mention the price on the website. If somebody does not mention the prices on the website, then be very careful. Most probably, the vendor has something to hide and is not trustworthy. Right2Vote is very transparent about the pricing of its services and contract terms. A detailed cost calculator is available here.

All good vendors will have all technical and commercial information readily available on the website. However, you can also call them or email them asking for these details. Vendors do not mind sending these details as they do not have to waste time reading a lengthy RFP and have all the information in a standard format ready with them.

Technical bid Vs Financial bid

Generally, governments and large organisations go for a tender for price discovery and for identifying the lowest bidder (L1). The L1 system of tender makes sense where quality is not a big issue. However, for a critical service like eVoting, the technical bid is the most important. A good client should eliminate all low-quality service providers in the technical bid round.

In many organisations, we have seen that clients are not technically aware and focus only on the financial bid. This is suicidal. It would lead to the selection of a low-quality service provider. Low-quality service provider means low voter turnout, selection of the wrong candidate, complaints against the system and possible litigation. The cost of any litigation would be at least 10 times the money saved by selecting a low-quality service provider.

Negotiation after price discovery via tender

Another common mistake organisations make is that even after identifying the L1 bidder through an extensive bidding process, they go on and open negotiations with other bidders. When a service provider knows that L1 will not be automatically selected and he will again get a chance to negotiate, he will never submit his best bid. This defeats the purpose of the tender. And mind you, the tendering process is a very costly process for the client, too. Making of RFP, answering queries, making changes, calling for bids, evaluating bids and finally awarding the bids is not only a very costly process, but it sucks up a lot of time and resources of the organisation. Time and resources which could have been used for a more productive purpose.

Another big issue with negotiation after tender is that it opens the doors for favouritism. There are always some vested interests in any organisation that would love to manipulate the elections. Vested interest can disclose the L1 price to its favourite bidder and ask him to revise their price lower than L1. The fairness and transparency that a tender process aims to achieve are lost by such renegotiation.

For better price discovery, an organisation can rather go for a reverse eAuction. Right2Vote also provides a reverse eAuction platform.

Summing up: Points to remember while selecting an eVoting service provider

1. Direct discussion/negotiation is better than tendering. Tending leads to wastage of time, effort and increases cost for both parties.
2. Tendering document should be simple and focus on 3-4 critical elements, including certifications, experience, and features
3. Financial bids should be opened only for technically qualified bidders.
4. Asking for EMD, PG, Financial Statements, and one-sided contracts does not add any value for the client, but leads to good service providers dropping out.
5. Tender and negotiation are mutually exclusive. Either call for tender or negotiate. For the best price discovery along with saving in cost and effort, one can go for empanelment & reverse eAuction.

To know more about Right2Vote’s election technology, please refer:

• Government of India certificates
• Features for eVoting
• Security and safety
• Pricing
• Our customers
• Contact Us