but with this in mind, the department of elections issued a request for information, r. f.i., in and which includes the possible development of on open source coding system. the elections commission organized a hearing with r.f.i. in november of 2015 and inviting respondents to present information. regarding time and cost, theened were not ranged from six months to a few years or more and the cost ranged in $200,000 to $13 million or more. after the r.f.i. process was complete and after the hearing in fiscal year 17-18, the committee and information technology allocated $300,000 to the department of elections to issue a request for proposals to identify and to assess the feasibility and developing the open source voting system. of that $300,000, $175,000 was allocated to agreement with the contractor. and $125,000 was allocated to hiring the f.t.e. to assist with writing the r.f.p. and work following the issuance of the business case. the department was unable to hire the f.t.e. which means that the $125,000 for that position remains available for the project. and contractor