Biometric ID platform utilised for Oman elections

Oman has once again successfully utilised a biometric-based digital ID platform for voter identity verification during the 2023 Shura Council member elections.

The platform, developed by uqudo and built on TECH5’s biometrics, helped in the verification process of over 750,000 voters.

Innovative voting solution

According to an announcement published by uqudo, the Antakhib mobile app and biometric ID platform was used for the first time in the history of Shura Council’s member elections within and outside the Sultanate of Oman.

This helped to provide remote voting capabilities to eligible voters outside the country on 22 October and within Oman on 29 October.

Before being able to vote electronically, voters had to scan biometric identity cards using their phones.

This subsequently allows for the NFC chip on the ID to be read by the application before the system then verifies the identity by utilising AI-based facial recognition and liveness detection technologies.

Not only does this verification process take less than a minute to complete, but it requires no manual intervention .

uqudo has clarified that voter choices are not linked to identities.

“A historic moment for the country”

“Oman’s digital elections are a historic moment for the country and with uqudo and TECH5’s collaborative efforts, we are confident that the entire electoral process is fair and accurate, in line with Oman’s vision of enhanced digital acceleration,” commented Mohamed Fagiri, Founder and CEO, uqudo.

“We were delighted to see that TECH5’s biometric technologies and the digital ID platform of our partner uqudo successfully used to develop the first-of-its-kind electronic voting system in the Middle East and Africa and used for elections in Oman,” added Rahul Parthe, Co-founder, Chairman and CTO, TECH5.

“We will continue developing the offerings to ensure that every country has access to innovations powering fair and convenient elections for everyone.”