Press Releases 2008
Pakistan's Computerized Electoral Rolls System Completed
September 9, 2008
Islamabad - The United States Government, through the Agency for International Development (USAID), today marked the completion of the installation of Pakistan's Computerized Electoral Rolls System (CERS) with a signing ceremony at the Election Commission of Pakistan.
In 2006, the ECP, with the support of the U.S. Government, contracted a consortium of leading local companies to execute a Computerized Electoral Roll System for Pakistan. Approximately $9 million was provided for the project which had two phases. Phase one, included establishing logistics, data entry systems, printing and distribution of the Draft and Final Electoral Rolls for the February 2008 general elections. This phase was completed in late 2007. The second phase consisted of the procurement and installation of a suite of software applications to be used for the ongoing management of the Election Commission's voter registration database and its electoral rolls.
The Election Commission has been working to deploy CERS at all five of its locations - Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta. The final deployment, at the Provincial Election Commission's office in Quetta, was completed on Thursday, September 4, 2008.
The CERS project was implemented by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. The Certificate of Acceptance signed at today's ceremony is a significant milestone in the development of a state-of-the-art electoral system for Pakistan and will contribute greatly to free and fair elections for the country.
Since 2002, the U.S. Government, on behalf of the American people, has provided more than $2 billion to Pakistan to improve economic growth, education, health and governance, and to assist with earthquake reconstruction.