PUTRAJAYA: A company is proposing a RM200 million biometric system for use in the general election to the Election Commission.
However, several parties, including government agencies, are strongly resisting the proposal, which the commission is studying.
The New Straits Times learnt that the company would provide the commission with 25,000 Netbooks and 25,000 Dermalog fingerprint devices.
It will also provide a centralised back-end system for biometric verification and voting system with workflows.
The company is offering to convert fingerprint images to its Dermalog biometric template.
It will provide the commission with 14 million citizens’ records containing fingerprint images, portraits and demographic data, which it intends to download from the National Registration Department’s database.
However, the department, which is the custodian of the personal records of Malaysians, is averse to this plan. NRD said conversions to the Dermalog template would mean a drop in quality when compared with the quality of the Morpho template used in its d at a b a s e .
It insisted that EC use the Morpho template as it matched the template for MyKad.
Industry sources said the devices and system from the company would not be able to verify templates or minutiae (branching points of fingerprint ridge lines) in MyKad, despite being able to read MyKad information.
It is learnt that another company is hoping to be picked for the project and had in April quoted EC a price of RM300 million.
However, it recently revised this to RM160 million.
It is also understood that a third company had submitted a proposal, saying its system would cost less than a quarter of the cost quoted by other companies. It offered 2,500 Netbooks and readers.
This company said its devices could read all minutiae verification of the Morpho template in MyKad.
A source said: “The EC workflow is a proven system and the introduction of biometrics is only for identification pur poses.” The source said the government could save cost by allowing EC to use devices supplied for the scrapped petrol subsidy-control mechanism.
The third company said it would ensure the use of these devices was made possible. The devices, all 6,000 units with a display terminal, had not been used since the petrol subsidy schemewas scrapped.
The company is on the same wavelength with NRD on MyKad being the source for identification.
It said people with defective MyKad chips would have to change them before the general election.
NRD intends to replace its MyKad chips with higher quality ones from Januar y.
NRD sources expressed concern about a private company being allowed to extract personal data.
They said even in cases where the courts subpoenaed details of citizens, NRD officials would take the citizens’ documents to the courts to protect the information.
A NRD spokesman said it was still studying all the proposals.
Taken from NST
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