uqudo in partnership with TECH5 supports countries in organizing free and fair elections

uqudo’s leading digital identity platform combined with TECH5’s top-tier facial authentication and liveness technologies provides a smooth and secure voter identity verification for elections.

uqudo is one of MEA’s most innovative identity companies and has a market-leading digital identity solution that offers governments and private sector companies an easy, quick, and safe way to verify identities, validate transactions, and authenticate users. Along with the ability to verify identity documents in numerous MEA countries, uqudo is also the only digital identity company that can verify National ID cards and passports.

TECH5 is an international technology company, which focuses on developing disruptive biometric and digital ID solutions using AI and Machine Learning technologies. A combination of sustained investment and single-minded dedication to the development of biometric modalities that capitalize on AI has resulted in TECH5’s algorithms being consistently ranked in the top tier of NIST ranking for face, fingerprint, and iris recognition.

Mohamed Fagiri, uqudo’s Founder and CEO states “uqudo prides itself on building identity solutions that can be deployed and customised according to the regulations of every country in MEA. Facilitating the recent Oman elections smoothly was in line with our vision to build a trustworthy identity platform and play a key role in our region’s digital transformation.”

Oman’s Ministry of Interior recently held municipal elections via a digital voter identification system that was developed and facilitated by uqudo in collaboration with TECH5.

For the voting process, voters first scanned their biometric identity cards using their smartphones. The system then verified their identity using AI facial recognition and liveness detection technologies provided by TECH5, letting the citizen vote for their selected candidates. The entire procedure takes less than a minute and is completed without any manual intervention, and voters’ choices are not linked to their identity, a fundamental tenet of elections.

“uqudo’s powerful identity platform and TECH5’s technologies played a major role in easing the entire voting process and letting voters cast their votes without any technical issues while also reducing the number of election workers”, quoted H.E. Khalid bin Hilal Al Busaidi, the Undersecretary in the Ministry of Interior and the Chairman of the Main Committee for Elections.

With the remote voting system letting voters choose their representatives without visiting an electoral booth, the overall cost of the voting process was also reduced drastically.

The use of a digital and remote voting system constituted a major shift in the traditional electoral process, keeping in view the global technological developments and growth of the MEA region.

Eng Talal Said al Mamari, CEO of Omantel, hailed the e-voting experience, which he described as a fruitful outcome of the government’s efforts to expand the base of society’s participation in this decision-making process. He pointed out that electronic voting provides an excellent example of public-private collaboration in saving time and effort.