Monitoring and transparency of data are critically important for any election process. The State Election Commission (SEC) of Haryana in collaboration with National Informatics Centre (NIC) Haryana has introduced and successfully implemented an efficient web-based application called ‘e-Dashboard’ - http://mcelections.nic.in during the 5th Municipal General Election-2016 held in Haryana. This online application facilitates provision of election specific vital information and monitoring of electoral data. e-Dashboard has become an integral part of the election process replacing all the conventional monitoring and communications systems used.
OBJECTIVE A number of communications and monitoring tools and technologies are required for the election processes in our democratic system for conducting election in a free, fair and transparent manner. In traditional systems, such process were held with limited and restricted resources such as phones, telecommunications system/ Fax/ E-Mails for fetching and disseminating information amongst the state level to the field level election functionaries. Using such traditional communications means, there involved time delay, access issues and difficulties in manual compilation procedures, which are prone to errors and gapes. To overcome such issues NIC-Hisar (Haryana State Centre) has developed and implemented an online & live e-Dashboard for the 5th Municipal General Election 2016 recently at the State of Haryana. Election was held for various municipal councils and committees of the State. The application has been hosted at server of NIC-Haryana State Centre, Chandigarh.
National Informatics Centre, Haryana and the State Election Commission, in a joint collaboration has conceptualized that all the processes of election i.e., from nomination to declaring of the winning members of Municipal Councils be automated by deploying an efficient online web application with a frontend Dashboard. In the process, it was conceptualised that data of each of the candidates with all credentials be captured while filing of the nominations. Ushering the complete credentials of candidates submitting nominations for Municipal Councils and Municipal Committee. The various parameters captured are: Name of the Municipal Council, Ward number, Name, Father’s/ Husband’s name, Address, Gender, Marital status, Blood group, Occupation, Mobile number, Date of birth, Caste, Educational qualification, Aadhaar number etc. Data is fed at the Municipal Council/ Municipal Committee and District level. Nomination dashboard displays the information of the all nominations filed. Nominations details are uploaded directly from the concern Municipal Council/ Committee and information is used by the respective Returning Officer, Deputy Commissioners in District and State Election Commissioner at HQ for dissemination of information to media and the public under the same URL. An URL link to the dashboard has also been provided at the SEC Haryana site.
e-Dashboard for Poll Process and Results - Another dashboard was launched for poll monitoring and declaring the winning members (Municipal Council wise) on the same day of completion of the poll. The e-Dashboard was populated directly under the supervision of the Returning Officers of respective Municipal Councils. The Master data of each booth such as name of booth, number of voters etc. was entered by the concerned Municipal Council/ Committee. All the pre-poll and poll day activities such as reaching of the Party at the designated booth, establishing of the booth, starting of poll, poll percentage i.e. voter turnout, voter in queue at 5:00 PM, end of polling, result of winners and EVM deposited after the end of polling. All these parameters were updated at the dashboard in real time, dynamically from the concerned Municipal Council/ Committee.
FEATURES • Populating data on e-Dashboard from authentic source in real time mode • Monitoring and transparency in the entire system at different levels • Swapping all traditional communication means (Phone/Fax/e-Mail) for dissemination of information and replaced with new live online e-Dashboard • Statistical view of various parameters in instant mode • Public view forwarding step towards transparent and responsive governance • Contender for more such applications to be percolated under Digital India regime across the country • Innovative and exemplary efforts of NIC-Haryana for other states in the country and can be rolled out in other states with minor modification
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS • Government can reach out to all representatives through a broadcast SMS using the database ULB’s representatives • Any mobile based campaign in the interest of general public can be run using this database • Database will provide a comprehensive framework to the Government for extending various welfare schemes and can be used for monitoring purposes further
ICT TECHNOLOGY & INFRASTRUCTURE USED • Web Server: Windows Server 2008 enterprise (64 Bit OS) IIS 7.0 • Blade servers (E5530 2.4 GHz dual processor) with 32 GB RAM • Database Server: Windows Server 2008 enterprise (64 Bit OS) • Blade servers (E5530 2.4 GHz dual processor) with 128 GB RAM • Internet Bandwidth: NICNET/NKN 1Gbps connectivity (Hosted at NIC Haryana Data Centre) • Software – ASP.Net with C# and database -SQL Server 2012 Enterprise, JQuery