Project background.
The Office of the Deputy Prime-Minister (ODPM) was created as a central department in its own right in May 2002. It is responsible for policy on housing, planning, devolution, regional and local government and the national fire service. Elections falls under the ODPM remit, and include the Electoral Modernisation Programme, which is funded by grants to a number of Local Authorities.
Having been selected by the ODPM to be a supplier on the framework contract to provide e-Election services until May 2005,
Unisys and Election Systems & Software (ES&S) received an order in March 2003 to deliver pilots in the May 2003 local elections. Unisys worked with South Tyneside, Chorley and Rushmoor Council to provide multi-channel voting systems to their citizens.
The problem/opportunity
Voting procedures in the UK have not fundamentally changed in the last 100 years. While the world has changed a great deal during this time, due in part to technological advances, the practice of having to vote by paper in your local polling station has remained.
The Government has now made explicit commitments to implement electronic service delivery across all public services, setting a target of 2005 for 100 per cent availability of services electronically. As part of this drive for modernisation between the citizen and Government, voting could not be left behind.
The Government have commissioned e-Election pilots until 2005 to test the UK citizens’ appetite to vote by a means that reflects their lifestyle. In Unisys pilots:-
- South Tyneside electors were able to vote via post with electronic counting, the Internet, touch-tone telephone, as well as via SMS text messaging and multi-lingual touch-screen kiosks in six locations around the city. The voting period was from the 15th of April until 5.00pm on the 1st of May with the exception of SMS, which closed 24 hours earlier.
- Chorley citizens were able to vote by post with electronic • counting, by Internet and touch-tone telephone from the 18th of April until 9pm on the 1st of May.
- Citizens in Rushmoor combined voting at traditional polling • stations on 1 May with Internet voting from Friday 25th of April until 9pm on the 1st of May.
The e-Voting pilot schemes objectives were to:-
- Make voting more straightforward for the public.
- Make elections more accessible, either by making it more convenient to vote or by making voting more attractive to people currently less likely to vote.
- Make the administration of elections more efficient and cost effective.
- Maintain or increase the level of security at elections.
An internal objective for Unisys was to collect and analyse information to ascertain scalability for further pilots and potentially a General Election. The focus of analysis is to allow future elections to be run more efficiently and resources to be deployed more effectively. It was also an objective to discover how long it took for the Authorities to become familiar with the technology. This information could then be fed into the planning and milestones for future e-Voting pilots.
Solution
One of the main focuses of the Government’s programme is to encourage innovation in the pilots. In fact, this is a requirement in order to participate. The nature of the pilots themselves therefore provided a blank page for the delivery and its management. Each pilot was set in areas where the demographic regions were diverse, each technical solution was different and the voting periods varied.
The pilots were implemented under the TeamMethod project management methodology. Key areas of focus of the methodology were implemented including acceptance, quality and testing. A primary focus was placed on strong management of risks and issues.
Unisys partnered with ES&S for delivery. ES&S’s strength of elections experience combined with Unisys wealth of project management and consultancy capabilities provided a strong
team for the delivery of the pilots.
A team of experienced project managers were placed to work with the Local Authorities in delivering the elections and a central management function and project office managed the
team. A centre of excellence including skills for election delivery, the solution and its technology and processes was formed to support the Local Authority pilot project management.
A 24x7 help desk, with communication channels through to the Local Authorities and the centre of excellence, was in place to address any queries from voters.
The structure of the team meant that each party was positioned to deliver their areas of strength and knowledge. The structure for delivery was defined to ensure that skills were utilized efficiently while ensuring knowledge of the overall requirements and priorities from other areas were communicated and brought into the mix.
Benefits
How were challenges overcome?
- Short and immovable timescales. For the delivery of a voting system to be operational in mid-April when it was ordered in mid-March, the project had to be very tightly managed so that there were no delays in any stages of the project. Regular team briefings meant that issues were overcome almost immediately.
- Local Authorities’ familiarity with the technology. There were concerns about the consequences if technology failed during the ‘live’ voting period. The spotlight of overnment and the general public was firmly on the pilots and any glitches would be magnified. It was vital to keep the Authorities completely up to date with developments and to take them through each
stage of the process slowly. Communication was key. Having chosen the channels to implement, the Local Authorities needed to agree the voting processes and the look and feel for each channel. For Rushmoor, where Internet was the only channel that we were providing this was a single process of walking through the template process and screens in order to get local preferences documented, implemented and agreed. For South Tyneside there were five channels from e-counting, to Internet, to SMS text messaging. All these channels needed agreement. - Ensuring the incumbent Local Authority team has enough support for delivery. The Unisys project director working with the Unisys resource management function identified people with the right credentials. The team was formed in a
week and given a full briefing about what the project would involve, the timescales and likely challenges. What transpired was that the team developed into a vibrant community where ideas were cross-fertilised between the different project teams covering all the project sites so that potential obstacles and solutions were conveyed to the wider team prior to them being encountered. - Voter awareness. To increase the public’s awareness of the new technology to be used in the elections, a Voter Outreach campaign was implemented. The first element of this comprised of a ‘voting pack’ which held all the information about which channels were available to vote. Each elector within each onstituency received one of these packs which contained simple step-by-step instructions about how to vote by their preferred voting method. Moreover, a helpline was set up so that if any citizen had any questions about voting channels or procedures they could simply call a number and their question would be answered.
In Chorley, Unisys and Chorley Borough Council devised and employed a ‘voting at your fingertips’ marketing campaign. This comprised of several elements:
A local press campaign – Regular stories were published over the election period.
Radio advertising – Unisys and Chorley devised an advert which was run on the main local radio station throughout the twelve-day voting period.
Billboards – At several prominent roadside billboard sites,we ran adverts using the ‘voting at your fingertips’ graphic.
Open day – On the middle Saturday of the voting period, Unisys and Chorley ran an open day in Chorley town centre.
Posters – Posters were put up in centres of the community such as doctors’ surgeries, post offices etc. again highlighting the voting channels, voting period and the help line.
What were the quantifiable outcomes/results?
The scheme did succeed in facilitating voting. Three quarters of respondents to the Commission’s MORI poll in Chorley said that the new voting methods made the process of
voting better.
The overall level of user awareness and comprehension of the voting method being tested were high with 77% of those interviewed during the election and 88% interviewed after the election, by the Electoral Commission, saying that they were aware of the new voting arrangements.
- MORI polls reported that the respondents felt that the convenience of e-Voting channels were on average very good (40%), fairly good (27%), neither (8%), fairly poor (7%), very poor (3%) and don’t know (14%).
- Independent security tests carried out on the electronic channels failed to penetrate the implemented security solution.
- There is currently no evidence that the procedures provided for the scheme led to any increase in personation or other electoral offences, or any other malpractice in connection with elections.
What were the intangible benefits?
- Voting turnout can be a result of a number of factors; the impact of e-Voting pilots on turnout is therefore inconclusive since there is insufficient historical data. As with the 2002 local elections, the turnout for Chorley in 2003 (49.81%) was substantially greater than historic turnout figures for traditionally run elections in their borough.
- Experience of the Local Authorities in the implementation of e-Voting in the pilot phases increases knowledge and should increase the level of efficiency and reduce implementation costs for future e-Voting pilots.
- The UK is now seen as the leader in providing innovative electronic election services. South Tyneside in particular provided to its citizens one of the widest range of voting channels used in a local election.
