Interior Ministry launches second version of election app

Muscat: The Ministry of Interior launched the second version of the elections’ electronic application codenamed “Intakhib” (Elect), through which voters cast their ballots to choose who will represent them in the membership of the Shura Council over the Tenth Term.

Sayyid Hamoud said that the Ministry of Interior is moving towards digitizing all services and programmes as part of its digital transition plan, which benefits from advanced technologies. The plan ensures the application of the latest developments in artificial intelligence in a manner that reflects positively on services rendered to citizens and facilitates the participation of candidates and voters alike, he added.

Within the same context, the Ministry of Interior organized a media meeting in which it outlined the role of artificial intelligence technology that was added earlier to serve people with visual disabilities (the blind).

The app introduced an audio reading feature on voting steps, and later sign language, to explain voting steps to the deaf and dumb on an optional basis.

Abdul-Rahman Ali Al Hinai, Director of the electronic voting project “Intakhib,” explained that the VoiceOver feature for the blind will be active right from the first step (logging on to the application and entering the ID card number) and it will continue until such time that the voter chooses a candidate and confirms the vote.

Al Hinai stressed that the process of taking a voter's personal photo has become faster in the new version, notably after the addition of eye recognition for blind people so that they could exercise their electoral right and choose their preferred candidates under the guidance of an audio assistant that reads a file containing the names of the candidates for a voter’s constituency.