Challenge: Myriad Requirements
Elections are highly regulated a;airs. Even within
the same country, di;erent jurisdictions may stipulate di;erent accessibility requirements, counting
rules and ballot styles. All this means that project
teams must meet numerous requirements—or
potentially be held responsible for election irregu-larities and challenges.
Plan: Rigorous Requirements
Management
Online voting projects can be an exercise in
requirements management, says Steve Kilpatrick,
managing director, electionz.com, Christchurch,
New Zealand. Electionz.com is working with six
local government councils in New Zealand to create online voting systems. A major goal of this initiative is to reverse the nation’s decades-long trend
of dwindling voter turnout. While everyone agrees
that’s a laudable goal, Mr. Kilpatrick’s team has
learned how challenging it can be to meet security
requirements among all government stakeholders.
“;e online application software already exists;
we’re not developing anything new,” Mr. Kilpatrick
says. Project success is contingent on deploying the
software in a way that meets all requirements.
;e team received a list of requirements from
the national government detailing the functional
operating needs of the online voting system, which
was originally supposed to go live for elections in
October of this year. While the electionz.com team
documented and tested against those require-
ments, each of the councils began developing its
own project management documentation.
“;e councils have to answer a lot of questions
themselves: who’s on the governance team, what’s
the project assurance plan, what’s the commu-
nications plan,” says Mr. Kilpatrick. “All of that
documentation gets submitted to the [national]
Department of Internal A;airs and then reported
to the minister in charge, who presents it to the
Cabinet for a vote on whether or not to proceed.”
In April, the national government decided
against implementing online voting later this
year, citing security concerns. (Some local gov-
ernment council o;cials spoke out against the
decision, saying their security concerns had been
addressed.) Mr. Kilpatrick is hopeful the new
systems will be part of the next election cycle in
2019. In the meantime, his team will continue
testing to deliver a system optimized for both
security and accessibility.
Already, robust usability testing showed that
in some circumstances, visually impaired vot-
ers struggled with the user interface. “One of our
input ;elds wasn’t con;gured quite right to work
with a particular screen reader, so we went in and
tweaked the software,” says Mr. Kilpatrick. “It was
a subtle change, but it made a world of di;erence
for those voters—some said this is the ;rst time
they’ll be able to vote unassisted.”
Although it’s unclear when the national govern-
ment will allow online voting in local council elec-
tions, that small code change will bene;t visually
impaired voters around the country. Electionz.com
carries out about 150 online elections each year
for nongovernment clients—such as universities,
unions and associations—and can now improve
the voting experience for visually impaired voters
in those organizations.
“The
security
issues mean
hackers
would be
able to
violate the
system in a
way no one
can trace.”
—Joseph Kiniry, PhD
