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The NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) is seeking to refresh its fleet of old Acer tablets used for state, local and by-elections.
According to a request for tender (RFT), the Commission is probing suppliers for physical devices, commercial off-the-shelf software and services for system integration, provisioning, deployment and support, preferably on a rental basis.
The Commission described its current fleet of Acer tablets as “old, severely decreased battery life, a large proportion no longer work and data security is a growing concern."
Additionally, the Commission also said the in-house developed software is not maintained and cannot be easily expanded for future requirements.
These devices are used for electoral roll lookup to support declaration voting, play training videos and show area maps.
The NSWEC expects the new devices to offer the same functionality as the old ones, as well as determine voter eligibility, ensure correct ballot papers are issued, electronically search NSW street list data and provide additional training materials.
It also wants enhanced security compared to the existing devices, including encryption, protection from unsecured access, authentication and the establishment of “time bomb” software to erase all data stored locally to prevent access after a given date and time.
The rollout is expected to be ready by the 2023 state election in March, but may be needed sooner for by-elections.
The RFT is open for submissions until 12 January 2022.
Earlier this month, Revenue NSW released an RFT for at least one cloud migration partner to help shift ‘crown jewel’ workloads to a cloud platform.
