PM Network - August 2016

“severe vulnerabilities” that left the online platform open to manipulation and attack.

For a 2015 report by the nonpro;t U.S. Vote Foundation, Dr. Kiniry and his co-authors spent two years interviewing and analyzing data from election o;cials and university computer science and e-voting experts. ;e big ;ndings: A gold-stan-dard internet voting system must meet four core requirements: end-to-end veri;ability, transparency, usability and security. And no existing online system guarantees voter privacy or the correct election outcomes.

“What’s so troubling about existing online voting systems is that the security issues mean hackers would be able to violate the system in a way no one can trace,” Dr. Kiniry says.

Although additional steps are needed to make internet voting more secure, no foolproof methods exist yet, he says. Nonetheless, the question of online voting seems to have shifted from “should it happen” to “when will it happen,” says Dr. Kiniry. “;e attitude in the security community has changed from opposing any kind of online voting to thinking this will be a reasonable—even wonderful—thing, once the right security is in place.”

The iVote system
used last year in
New South Wales,
Australia was open to
attack, experts say. While meeting security standards is the biggest challenge facing project leaders tasked with designing and implementing online voting systems, it’s not the only one. Election-day deadlines and complex requirements driven by country-speci;c regulations
also pose common hurdles. Here’s how teams work to overcome them from
kicko; meeting to project closure.

Challenge: Immovable Deadline

When it comes to the ultimate deadline facing an internet voting project team, there’s no wiggle room: ;e election must happen on a certain day (or days) by law. Full stop.

Plan: Phased Scheduling
and Backup Solutions

“;e election’s going to happen regardless of whether you’re ready or not,” says Ian Brightwell, former CIO, New South Wales Electoral Commission, Sydney, Australia.

Mr. Brightwell knows the pressure of the immovable deadline ;rsthand: In 2011, his project team had just nine months and a budget of more than US$2.5 million to build New South Wales’ ;rst online voting platform for blind residents. While the voting happened without a hitch, the government subsequently decided to redevelop the system entirely to incorporate user feedback. For that project, which ;nished with the March 2015 election, the team had a larger budget (US$5 million) and more than twice as much time (two years), yet the deadline was as keenly felt as ever.

“Near the end, the infrastructure was running
late and we had problems in getting certain key
equipment from suppliers,” he says. “When we
;nally got it all in place and started testing, we
realized we had con;icts and had to make some
hard choices.”
;e project plan initially called for the team
to internally manage certain logging features,
but just two days before the election, the team
modi;ed the plan and used an external supplier
for event logging.