ETA Project Experience
ETA consultants have practical experience of assignments for electoral administrations planning and implementing systems supporting public election processes.
IT system procurement
Procurement management for a major systems acquisition for the NSW Electoral Commission. This included requirements analysis, research of technical options, business case development, preparation of RFQ documentation, establishment of project governance and management frameworks and liaison with NSW Procurement on tendering requirements and with NSW Treasury on Gateway Reviews as required by the NSW Government.
Business case development for ICT systems
Development and preparation of the business cases for a number of ICT systems supporting electoral processes within the NSW Electoral Commission, which formed part of successful funding applications for those systems. These included
- SmartRoll – automated enrolment system
- Redistribution system
- Non-Voters processing system
- The roll management system.
Feasibility of electronic and telephone voting
A feasibility document was prepared for the NSW Parliament in 2010, leading up to the initial implementation of the iVote® Electronic and Telephone Voting system that was first used in NSW for the 2011 State General election. An ETA team member led the feasibility study, which included a detailed business case supporting the development and implementation of the iVote® system. The iVote® system was introduced in order to provide blind, vision impaired and otherwise disabled electors the opportunity to lodge a secret ballot at NSW state general elections, without requiring the assistance of a third party. The eligibility was expanded prior to the election to include electors who were outside NSW on polling day.
iVote® online voting system
The New South Wales Electoral Commission’s iVote® system is an electronic voting system offering online and telephone voting, first used in 2011.
For the 2015 state general election, the iVote® system was substantially enhanced, with a new core voting system (the software component that encrypts, transmits, stores and protects votes) and verification process. An iVote® refresh process resulted in further improvements to security and the verification system for the 2019 state general election.
The system is to meet legislated requirements for technology assisted voting, with eligibility restricted to electors planning to be interstate or overseas on election day, living more than 20 kilometres from a polling place, with impaired vision or disabled such that they are unable to vote without assistance.
For the 2015 NSW general election the iVote® system comprised three major components hosted and managed separately
- Core voting system
- Registration and credential management
- Verification service.
To protect voting information, voter and vote data is encrypted and distributed within these three components such that breach of two of the three systems would be required for an attacker to successfully manipulate or identify votes.
In March 2015, over 280,000 votes were cast via the iVote® system, making it the largest online government election globally to date. The vast majority were by voters declaring they would out of the state on election day.
As part of the NSW Electoral Commission iVote® project team, ETA consultants provided planning, strategy, project management, procurement and operational management support throughout the two-year development and implementation project.
A new funding and disclosure system
Legislative changes resulted in new disclosure requirements for election donations and expenditures by NSW election candidates and political parties. A new system to support these processes and enhance previous functionality was planned as a two phase project over two years, for which an ETA team member undertook requirements and tender preparation and evaluation, contract negotiation and project management inputs. The system was contracted comprising configured commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software based on the Salesforce platform, with some custom modules, in an Agile development environment.
Election contact centre services
A contact centre platform was established to handle the high volume of calls that the NSW Electoral Commission receives prior to major election events. The Elector Enquiry Centre handles elector enquiries as well as enquiries from polling staff, returning officer technical support. For the 2015 state general election, the platform was integrated with the iVote contact centre functions which significantly increased the scale and complexity of the platform.
An ETA consultant was responsible for planning, implementing and high level operational coordination of the contact centre platform during approximately 4 months of its operation.