ECP decides to introduce EMS for next general elections

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has decided to use the Election Management System (EMS) to collect the results in the upcoming general elections.

The election commission has decided to provide EMS training to officers and staff of the electoral body.  The ECP has released the schedule for the EMS training which will be held from July 13 to July 26.

On July 13 and 14, training will be given to 20 Project Management Unit (PMU) and IT officers of the four provinces and the central secretariat. The two-day training will be given at the ECP Secretariat in Islamabad

Training will be given to 300 District Election Officers (DEO) of the Provincial Election Commission, Regional and District Election Commissioners from July 17 to 20. On July 24 to 26, a briefing will be given to the top officers of the four provinces. ECP has written a letter to the four provincial election commissioners

The decision to use the EMS has been done to avoid any controversy in results. The electoral watchdog is introducing this newly-designed EMS for the first time in the next elections.

During the previous elections, the controversial Result Management System (RTS) crashed in some constituencies on the night of election day. The technical fault in the system was considered an attempt to rig the elections and the controversy ensued for a long time.

The RTS system, which was an android-based application, was developed for immediate disbursement of results from the poll­ing station. The pilot project of EMS named the Result Management System (RMS) was experimented in the local level elections successfully.

The EMS will be used for all constituencies of the national assembly and provincial assemblies and would soon formally be announced by the electoral body.

The ECP has decided to train its staff to better acquaint them with the new system. With the newly introduced system data, data such as names, numbers and registered voters can be entered by the trained staff.

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