The technical counting element was procured and managed centrally by the Scottish Government on behalf of all 32 Scottish Local Authorities. The eCounting project was overseen by the Scottish Government and the eCounting hardware and software was provided by Fujitsu. The software provided was therefore common to all Scottish Councils and similar protocols etc. were in place throughout Scotland. Fujitsu provided a Count Centre Manager who was responsible for the operation of the technical side of the eCounting system.
Scanners captured the images of each vote and the software was able to detect ballot papers that required further manual verification to validate the vote.
Fujitsu/idox eCounting system – Timetable
- Prepare the idox system e.g. Configure for election; enter Candidates’ details, etc.
- Gather ballot papers.
- Scan (OCR) ballot papers.
- Adjudicators resolve potential ballot paper rejections.
- Decision made as regards end-of-voting.
- idox system calculates election results and generates various reports, including Preference Profile data file.
- Councils update their websites with election results. The various reports, including Preferences Profile data file, are made available for downloading to the general public.
- Within one week the Councils have to send election results – and the various reports, including Preference Summary Reports (Zipped) to the Electoral Management Board (EMB).
- The Electoral Management Board summarises all this data into a complex spread-sheet – which gets posted on EMB’s website.
- At no time is there a single location offering the ZIPed data file sets of all the Councils (and their Wards).