HYDERABAD: A recent release by the Election Commission of India (ECI) indicated there might be a problem with the GPS accuracy in the cVigil App — its official software through which one can report poll violations in the election-bound State. To file a complaint, one can take a photo or a video on the application and then click on the ‘submit’ link. ECI officials, who receive the complaints, follow them up, based on the GPS data embedded in the photos or videos.
Inherently, the GPS data is prone to errors and even if one uses a proper location manager provider, there would still be discrepancies in the location, said Kushal Pathak, Chief Information Security Officer with the ECI. The errors in GPS accuracy can be categorised into very large errors, which gives an accuracy of greater than 100m, and into small errors that close down the accuracy to less than 10m. The algorithm which cVigil employes removes the large errors. But, small errors? Not so much.
“Systematic errors can give a good accuracy number (<10m) but still represent a large position error. This is why one may see the jitter even if the accuracy is very good,” the release said. Taking this into cognisance, the CISO Pathak recommended a slew of external measures one can deploy to rectify the GPS errors.
First, one should switch on ‘high accuracy’ mode in smart phones. “This will use more battery but will utilise all available methods to give the most accurate location possible. cVigil automatically tries to use the high accuracy mode but it might fail.”
Since GPS is inherently prone to errors, the ECI recommended to find out if the issues were hardware or software related. For that purpose, it urged users to download GPS Essentials app, which would help in identifying the same.
Apart from this, it also asked users to install an external compass in their smartphones (if it does not already come pre-installed), and in the worst scenario, if one’s phone does not support GPS anymore, to buy an external receiver.