The citizens’ web portal and smartphone application created by the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) to provide real-time information on election results in the State on May 16, counting day, proved to be a big hit with netizens across the world.
The citizens’ portal, http://trend.kerala.gov.in, which carried the live data on results, registered nine crore hits, while the Android app recorded 22,000 downloads across the world, mainly from the UAE, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the U.K., apart from India. As much as 54 per cent of the domestic users were from Kerala and the rest from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, New Delhi, Gujarat, and West Bengal, Bijoy K. Korah, Manager, IT, KSITM, said.
The KSITM had joined hands with the State Election Department, State Data Centre (SDC-2) at Technopark, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN), BSNL, and Keltron to provide the election results to the public. The NIC had developed a software application named Trend and deployed officers to coordinate the data from counting stations. While Keltron provided the local area network, computers and television sets at counting centres, BSNL, Sify Technologies, and the National Knowledge Network provided Internet connectivity. The election data were hosted on servers housed at SDC- 2 and operated by Sify. KSWAN established a link connecting counting centres to SDC-2.
Mr. Korah said high-end servers configured at super computing level were used to serve the data online. The KSITM also ensured a separate data supply system to cater to the media. Provided with firewall security and trend entry servers from counting stations, the media interface registered more than a lakh hits.
Mr. Korah said the system had more than 3.5 lakh concurrent users per second connected to SDC-2. “Despite the heavy load, we could maintain connectivity because of the good bandwidth established by our partners in the project,” he said.
