Challenges

• Upgrade a biometric identification and voter registration system to further consolidate citizens’ data, such as fingerprints and photos; improve data security; and reduce administration requirements
• Ensure the database can scale to accommodate around 3% to 5% more registrations per year, as more citizens reach legal voting age
• Improve processing speeds and system performance in preparation for future elections

Solutions

• Included Oracle Exadata Database Machine in its upgraded biometric identification and voter registration system to provide a consolidated, scalable, and more manageable database platform
• Stored biometric and alphanumeric data—such as four fingerprints per person, photos, signatures, and contact details—for up to 100 million Bangladeshi citizens in a single database machine
• Improved biometric identification and voter registration system performance by 300%, despite using a single database rather than the 535 databases necessary in the previous system
• Reduced database administration and management requirements by 20% to 30%, by making it faster and easier to index data and add data files
• Improved security and avoided the risk of data tampering and human error, by developing integrated reporting capabilities based on Oracle best practices to track and analyze how staff across 602 locations used the identification system
• Implemented the upgraded system in just three weeks rather than few months
• Handled 6,000 concurrent verification queries—such as matching voters’ details—during tests
• Enabled the system to generate results from identification queries in less than 30 seconds based on just entering four fingerprints, which was not possible in the previous system
• Easily added new online biometric citizen identification services, such as ID card verification and fingerprint identification, and improved online data management using Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle SOA Suite
• Potentially enabled the commission to provide online citizen identification services to various other government and nongovernment organizations

Why Oracle

The BEC engaged Oracle Partner TigerIT to upgrade its original biometric identification and voter registration system with Oracle Exadata and Oracle SOA Suite, as both companies believed these products provided the fastest, easiest to manage, and most secure and scalable system infrastructure available.

“Oracle Exadata’s 14 storage servers and eight database servers are more than able to underpin our biometric identification and voter registration system,” said Brigadier General Akhtaruzzaman Siddique, psc, te, national project director, PERP and FINIDC Project, Bangladesh Election Commission. “The database machine has provided us with advanced security, processing, and administration functions. By including the scalable database machine in our identification and voter registration system, I believe we now have the best data capturing and management solution.”

“In terms of speed, availability, backup, security, and business intelligence capabilities, Oracle is the world leader,” said A. H. M. Abdur Rahim Khan, IT system consultant for preparation of electoral roll with photographs, United Nations Development Programme, and Bangladesh Election Commission (PERP, UNDP and BEC). “It was a logical choice for us to select Oracle Exadata and Oracle SOA Suite to develop a database of this size and complexity.”

Implementation Process

The BEC engaged TigerIT in late 2010 to upgrade its biometric identification and voter registration system. TigerIT included Oracle Exadata, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, and Oracle WebLogic Server in its upgraded TigerIT Identity Management Credentialing (TIdMC) solution and redeployed it in just three weeks, rather than requiring a few months as other systems have done.

BEC went live with the completed solution in April 2011.

Partner

After it initially developed the BEC’s biometric identification and voter registration system in 2008, the commission reengaged TigerIT to upgrade and redeploy the system in 2010.

TigerIT also provided a number of BEC employees with training, so they could in turn train their colleagues.

“TigerIT always provides prompt and easily accessible support,” said Siddique. “Its overall services and products have been superb.”