Oslo hires Indra´s "e-counting" technology again for the 2009 Parliamentary Elections

Oslo's city council commissioned Indra its constituency management during the scrutiny of the elections to Norway's parliament to be held on September 14th employing the Spanish IT company's proprietary "e-counting" system.

The contract, which amounts to 1.4 million euros, is the fourth electoral process Indra delivers in the country using this technology after the 2005 parliamentary elections, and municipal elections in 2007 and 2003. Besides this, the IT company is the only foreign company which has delivered elections in Norway.

Indra will provide the electoral colleges of Oslo's 15 districts with equipment to consult the electronic census. The technological multinational will engage in the design, print and distribution of 4.5 million ballot papers, logistics processes, and census system in 90 stations across the city and in the system and process definition to start the anticipated vote. The company will also generate post-election analysis.

Indra's e-counting solution includes training for the staff to get familiar with the system and results' safe storage, scrutiny and electoral results transmission.

“E-counting” increases reliability and transparency of the scrutiny since human error is less likely. Besides this, it employs high-speed scanners capable of reading 120 ballot papers per minute at the same time it combines different automatic recognition technologies for forms, marks, barcodes, printed and hand written characters to save a significant amount of time during scrutiny.

This contract adds up to the development of the recent legislative elections in Argentina in June 28th this year and the presidential elections in Angola in September last year and boosts Indra's presence in the international market of electoral processes.

Leadership in electoral processes

For the last years Indra has reinforced its professional profile by delivering elections in countries such as: UK, France, Slovenia, Portugal, Italy, USA, Argentina and Angola, among others and offering all sorts of services and electoral solutions and implementing innovative electronic vote systems. Besides this, the company gave thorough support to the whole process of the recent legislative elections in Argentina, to the elections to the European Parliament, to Galicia’s local government besides implementing the electronic vote for Real Madrid's 2009 Extraordinary General Meeting.

Indra has participated in more than 300 successful electoral processes worldwide involving more than 2.000 million voters and has been pioneer in the use of new technologies with solutions such as: PDA's, Electronic Vote, e-Counting, Internet Voting, CAE (electronically managed Electoral College) or the development of software and projects to promote citizen participation.

Indra invests in R+D+i in order to facilitate citizen access to electoral information through multiple channels thus guaranteeing transparency of the processes. Indra's Integrated Vote Counting System (SIRE), which has been tested, audited and compared in 20 countries, guarantees security, quality and transparence of the process.

Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to stock market capitalisation, and also the second Spanish company with the most investment in R&D. In 2008, revenues reached € 2,380 M, of which a third came from the international market. The company employs more than 29,000 professionals and has clients in more than 90 countries.