Destruction by fire on Electoral office tolls between $60-70 million
BY SAMIE WAIKORI
The Solomon Islands Electoral Commission (SIEC) has lost between $60-70 million worth of equipment in a fire that destroyed their office at Vavaya Ridge last week in Honiara.
The equipment was mainly vital election kits that SIEC had been using the since it began the biometric system in 2013.
In terms of money, only $10,000 belonging to their Social Club was burnt during the incident including personal items of some of the staff.
In a press conference yesterday, SIEC Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jasper Highwood Anisi said the equipment lost was mainly registration kits SIEC used to collect data and the server that hosted the data.
He explained that SIEC got the software that keeps the data after signing a contract with the Electoral Service International, based in Canada, Germany and Belgium.
Anisi added that under the contract, the company keeps the data because the software belongs to them, but the data belongs to the government.
He said to retrieve the data, there are two options – one is to host the data for temporary purposes, and the other is to work on rebuilding the data centre. This is so that the data can be hosted there.
Anisi stated that SIEC is looking at both options, but the less expensive one is to talk with ICT to see if they can temporarily host the data in one of their servers in the country.
He furthered that in line with the idea, they are planning to rebuild a new data centre to import required resources and will be working on it over the next few months.
Anisi said there are talks with the Australian Electoral Commission that showed willingness to set up the SIEC data centre.
He said they are still in talks and nothing is official as yet. SIEC could also reach out for support from its network of partners in the Pacific.
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