First-of-a-Kind Global Centre of Excellence to Advance Internet Voting

ESTONIA --(Business Wire)--

Smartmatic, world leader in the automation of elections, and Cybernetica, the Estonian R&D lab that built the original Internet voting system used in Estonia, have created a first-of-a-kind Centre for Excellence to study and develop Internet voting on a global scale.

It's called the Smartmatic-Cybernetica Centre for Excellence for Internet Voting and has been created as a multidisciplinary centre of research and development. Its goal will be to study and develop the process of voting over the Internet from all angles: social, political, organisational, procedural and technological.

"Estonia has been at the leading edge of Internet voting for years and is widely acknowledged as pioneers in the field. They are the only country in the world where all voters can choose to vote over the Internet securely. When we were looking at investing in the future of Internet voting, it made a lot of sense to go to the source of the world's best experience," said Paul Babic, Chief Strategy Officer at Smartmatic.

Estonia was the first country in the world to adopt Internet voting as a tool, and as many as 30% of Estonian voters have voted online in seven generalelections over the last ten years.

"We are very excited by this opportunity to take our extensive experience in government technologies and to make them available to other governments around the world. The blending of Cybernetica and Smartmatic talent and prowess brings a winning combination of experience in innovative technology and global reach capability," said Oliver Väärtnõu, CEO of Cybernetica.

The Centre for Excellence will look at factors such as user-friendliness and convenience, ergonomics and accessibility, security and auditability. In doing so, it aims to extend the reach of the world's best breed of Internet voting systems. It will be based in Tartu, the intellectual capital of Estonia.

About Smartmatic:

Smartmatic focuses on creating technology and offering services that have a profound social impact. In helping governments run better elections, we have processed over 2.3 billion auditable, secret and secure votes in more than 3,500 fraud-free elections. Our innovative approach to elections has made us the leader in the electronic voting industry worldwide in terms of revenue, profit, product offering, geographical presence and technological advancement.

We employ over 800 people in the US, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Barbados, Haiti, Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, Philippines, India and Taiwan.

About Cybernetica:

Cybernetica is an R&D intensive ICT company that researches, develops and manufactures secure e-government software solutions, light signalling and telematics products, surveillance and communications systems. They were the original developers of Estonia's renowned Internet voting system for government elections, the first and only such system to be used in national and general elections in the world. Cybernetica, headquartered in Estonia, has offices in Tallinn and Tartu, comprising advanced laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and measuring capabilities.