NGOs allege KPU marked up prices for software purchases

Irawaty Wardany ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 05/14/2009 10:08 AM  |  National

A group of NGOs have asked the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to investigate whether the General Elections Commission (KPU) marked up the price of software it purchased for the administration of April’s legislative elections.

“We found through our investigations that the amount the General Elections Commission spent on purchasing information technologies was inflated by Rp 36.5 billion (US$3.5 million), or 63 percent of the total budget of Rp 69.98 billion,” Arif Nur Salam from the Indonesia Budget Center (IBC) said Tuesday.

Of the amount, nearly Rp 9 billion budgeted for the Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software was wasted, Arif said.

The IBC, Indonesia Parliamentary Watch, Election and Democratic Syndicate,  Independent Election Supervisory Committee, Initiative Institute, Indonesia Corruption Watch and Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency filed their investigation results with the KPK to assist the antigraft body with completing its evaluation into the KPU’s software purchases.

The KPK said last week it would launch an investigation into projects linked with IT purchases at the KPU last month.

The KPU spent Rp 170 billion (US$15.9 million) purchasing Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software and its compatible hardware so it could digitally manage the national vote count.  
The ICR software allowed KPU staff to scan the results of hand marked ballots from polling stations into numbers and letters. Those results were later sent to the central KPU office to be processed and published on its website.

However the KPU failed to meet its own deadline and turned to manually counting the  votes
instead.

“There are several points we need to take away from the KPU’s purchase of IT, and they are that bad planning, due to a tight schedule, forced the KPU to rely on ICR technology which was technically problematic,” Arif said.

He said the fact the head of the KPU’s Technology Information Team, Toemin A Masoem, resigned from his position over the decision to purchase that particular system was evidence of the commission’s misjudgment.

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