Gregg McGilvray Chief Technical Strategist election.com

 Provider of global election and voter services  Public and private organizations  Paper based, Internet, telephonic ballot distribution and voting  Many election styles

Election and Voter Services Technical Committee The purpose of the Election and Voter Services Technical Committee is to develop a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations. The services performed for such elections include but are not limited to voter role/membership maintenance (new voter registration, membership and dues collection, change of address tracking, etc.), citizen/membership credentialing, redistricting, requests for absentee/expatriate ballots, election calendaring, logistics management (polling place management), election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting and demographics. - Committee Charter

Election and Voter Services Technical Committee  Data interchange standard  XML  Facilitate all aspects of election and voter services, public and private  Sanctioned through OASIS

Interchange Standard  Need for information to be exchanged at several points in the election process  Several parties involved  Need to service dissimilar systems and equipment  Open process

XML  Emerging widely accepted open standard  Ability to support disparate systems  Text based  Easy to understand and implement  Extensible  International

Targeted Services  Voter/member registration  Voter/member role maintenance  Balloting and Voting  Tabulation  Reporting  Auditing

OASIS Background  Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards  International standards body  Member based consortium  Open, Independent, Not-for-profit  Technical agenda set by members  Open, democratic, vendor neutral  No one party dictates standard  One company, one vote  Open to public scrutiny and comment

OASIS Background  Fee based organization  Corporate sponsorships or individual status  200+ organizations, 250+ members  22 technical committees  Cross committee cooperation  Motivated members 

OASIS Benefits  Quicker time-to-market  Web site, mail lists  IPR policy  Copyright, antitrust  Expertise of other committees  Relationships with other standards bodies (W3C, ISO, IETF)

Election and Voter Services Technical Committee  First OASIS “social committee”  Provide generic extensible framework to build upon

History  Formed March 2001  election.com, Accenture, Microsoft  Inaugural Meeting May 2001  Chairmanship change, August 2001  Nine meetings to date  Teleconference and face-to-face

Committee Membership Cross Section  Corporations  Election service providers  Governments  E-envoy UK Cabinet Office (Anwar Choudhury - chair)  Australian Electoral Commission, Italy, France, NZ  Open source groups  Media  Election reform and watchdog groups

Milestones and Deliverables  Project plan completed Fall 2001  Voting Process Document being modified  Phase I specification published for review April, 2002  Phase II  Future

Project Aspects  Project Overview  Policy requirements  Schema development  Cross-cutting strands (authentication, authorization, privacy, security)  Applications  Stakeholder engagement  Liaisons with other committees  Promotion

Voting Process Document  Outlines public process  Identifies schema requirements  Identifies applications  Identifies audit points  Develop glossary of terms  Application of security

Future  Phase II to include features missed in Phase I  E-Government expansion  Ongoing enhancements and review