Kofax Information Capture Technology Increases Efficiency and Speed of Local Government Voting Processes in New Zealand.

IRVINE, Calif. -- Ascent Capture Dramatically Improves Efficiency of Vote Counting and Election Reporting for Local Government Councils

Kofax (LSE:DCM), the world's largest information capture vendor, today announced the successful results of an installation of its industry-leading Ascent Capture technology to perform vote capture and reporting for local government elections in New Zealand. Independent Election Services (IESL), an Auckland, New Zealand-based private company under contract to 13 local government councils, implemented Kofax's enterprise-scale information capture platform to improve the speed and efficiency of a new automated vote-counting system enacted to process and tally votes for one-third of New Zealand's national voting population.

Prior to the new Kofax-enabled system, IESL relied on a legacy vote-tallying system that required voting officials to manually scan barcodes placed next to candidate names on ballots. The complexity of the information on the ballots, along with the physical differences in the size and dimensions of the various types of ballots used throughout New Zealand, made processing votes a tedious, time-consuming task. Ascent Capture significantly reduced the amount of time IESL staff spent tallying votes and enabled election results to be available in a matter of hours.

"With the attention that voting processes were given in the prior two national elections in the U.S., there is an obvious need to augment current processes with new technology such as information capture to reduce human error and greatly speed the posting of election results," said Anthony Macciola, vice president of development and marketing at Kofax. "With Ascent Capture, government entities and their service providers, like the local government councils in New Zealand and IESL, can accurately capture election data, process high volumes of ballots and deliver final election results faster than ever."

To implement the custom vote-capture system, IESL contacted Moore Gallagher, a local print and database management company, and Infinity Solutions, a Kofax Certified Solutions Provider (CSP) and one of New Zealand's largest systems integration firms. Moore Gallagher and Infinity Solutions chose to incorporate the Ascent Capture platform as part of the overall information capture system due to its capacity to seamlessly integrate with the existing IESL hardware infrastructure and Moore Gallagher's proprietary vote-counting software -- Votext.

In addition, the integration of the Ascent Capture platform helped meet the demands of the local councils for fast and accurate election results.

According to Mark Broome, account manager at Infinity Solutions, another critical element to the overall information capture solution was the integration of several Kodak i820 scanners. The scanners provided an "endorser" feature that, in tandem with the Ascent Capture platform, printed a number on each paper document as it was scanned to facilitate matching the physical hard copies of documents with their corresponding digital images.

"The Ascent Capture platform, along with the Kodak i820 scanners, enabled us to create a versatile, fully auditable information capture system that meets the legal requirements for processing vote counts twice, comparing counts, and reconciling any differences that may have occurred," said Broome. "In addition, Ascent Capture's intuitive interface helped IESL staff maintain unprecedented accuracy of captured data, which significantly improved IESL's elections reporting processes."

"In 2004, IESL was responsible for processing over 400,000 voting documents during a three-week voting period. Because of these high numbers, we implemented full-page, high-volume scanning, used in conjunction with Kofax's Ascent Capture software and new (Votext) election software," said Dale Ofsoske, owner of IESL. "It was important that any new processing platform used did not compromise our reputation for high standards of integrity, accuracy and efficiency in conducting elections. Rigorous testing, along with a commitment by providers to the project has resulted in a very successful outcome of providing timely and accurate election results."

As a result of the new information capture system, IESL was able to process approximately 400,000 ballot documents in one election and deliver progress results just one hour after polls closed, and preliminary election results before the end of the voting day. Due to the enormous success of the new system, many other voting communities in New Zealand are considering adopting an information capture solution.

About Infinity Solutions

Infinity Solutions is the second-largest New Zealand-owned IT and consulting business. Through its partnerships with world-leading suppliers of hardware and software and its own team of specialists, it provides a full range of solutions around IT infrastructure and hardware, software products and services, IT operations and support and business consulting.

Its infrastructure technology division offers enterprise-class technology solutions for data storage, traffic management and network security and specializes in document imaging technology through partnerships with Kofax and Kodak. For more information go to www.infinitysolutions.co.nz.

About Moore Gallagher

Moore Gallagher is New Zealand's largest integrated provider of print, direct marketing, billing and database management services.

The company has a strong presence in the local government sector -- printing and mailing voting papers for city and district councils throughout New Zealand where local government elections are run by postal ballot.

Moore Gallagher has utilized its print and database design expertise to create Votext -- a Web-based document formatting and proofing tool.

The process involves candidate and voting document information already available on the Votext Web site being downloaded to the Votext software for roll generation, mail file generation, vote scrutiny and counting processes. This reduces the workload for councils by doing away with what was traditionally the double entry of candidate information for voting documents and vote-counting software. For more information call [phone].

About Kofax

Kofax, a division of DICOM Group plc (LSE:DCM), is the world leader in production capture systems software, according to research by Strategy Partners. Kofax products accelerate business processes and reduce their cost by collecting paper documents, forms and e-documents from throughout organizations, transforming them into retrievable information, and delivering it all into line-of-business applications, databases and archives. The company's Ascent platform is the most popular information capture application worldwide, and its VRS (VirtualReScan) is the de facto standard for scanning productivity. Kofax products are widely used in finance, government, insurance, healthcare, and a broad range of companies and agencies that must capture critical business information from paper and electronic documents and forms.

Note to Editors: Kofax, Ascent, Ascent Capture and VRS are registered trademarks of Kofax Image Products Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks belong to their respective owners.