Election TechReports(tm) Newsletter--Oct2002

*Election TechREPORTS^™* InfoSENTRY® Services www.infosentry.com info@infosentry.com Issue 12 October 2002 Privacy Policy FEATURE 1: The Big Federal Challenge to the States FEATURE 2: Feature Organization: The National Association of State Election Directors
The Big Federal Challenge to the States The passage of the Federal election reform bill (H.R. 3295--"Help America Vote Act") portends one of the greatest shifts of authority and responsibility for election administration in the nation's history. Along with all the political and organizational changes in the relationship among county, state, and federal election authorities, there is a huge change coming in management and administration of voter registration data. For many state and local election authorities, it will be one of the most significant challenges they have faced. In over half the states, offices that have never had responsibility for computer systems much larger than the local area networks in their offices will have to design, implement, and start to manage very large systems. Apart from the huge expenditures the Feds will provide for new voting equipment, one of the longer term changes will be in the bill's requirements for statewide voter registration systems. Many a seasoned observer believe the $3.9 bill Fed contribution will be only a down payment toward meeting these requirements. One national election observer estimates the total price tag will be between $10 billion and $15 billion. Others place the total cost higher. Immediately after the bill passed and these numbers became more real, we imagine that in some of the nation's largest information technology corporations, meetings occurred along these lines: SENIOR MARKETING VP: "Okay, I saw on the news that Congress passed some kind of bill about elections that has billions in it for new voting equipment and computer systems. I heard there is a lot more money out there that the states will have to pony up to make all this stuff work. Who knows anything about elections and voting?" SENIOR MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY CHORUS: Silence. SENIOR MARKETING VP: Oh, come on! There's a lot of money out there! So, who has voted in the past couple of years? AN EXECUTIVE ON THE RISE: "I voted in 2000--I think." SENIOR MARKETING VP: ALRIGHTY, THEN! You are the Director of our new Election Services Division! Now get out there and put a plan together to capture 25% of this market! Far fetched? Not really. There will be a quick move in many boardrooms to find, develop, or buy expertise in this market. Consulting firms will put together quick white papers and marketing brochures on their vision of tomorrow's voting systems and voter registration systems--even though they know little or nothing about elections administration. It will be a "Buyer Beware" market. Very few state election officials have experience managing data critical to election day voting. Very few state election officials and vendors have implemented statewide information systems. As one of staff member in an election office commented, you get an idea of the size and cost of it all when you realize that in most states there will be one voter registration database conversion (multiplied by the number of counties), one major point-to-point data circuit (multiplied by the number of counties), one hardware or LAN implementation (multiplied by the number of counties), one set of staff trained on the new system (multiplied by the number of counties), one set of operational procedures developed and implemented (multiplied by the number of counties)...you get the idea. Any statewide information system is a big deal! Finding someone experienced in operating election systems AND in implementing statewide data networks will not be easy...and you will not find those resources in most of the firms rushing into the market. There are huge jobs to be done and the starting system vendor lineup is thin on successful track records and experience in installing statewide systems. Between now and 2006, Chief State Election Offices will have the pleasure of developing statewide election plans and implementing what will be one of the largest mission critical information networks in their respective states. They will have to prepare statewide election plans, project management plans, needs assessments, requirements analyses, detail and technical designs, RFPs, proposal evaluations, contracts, implementation plans, data conversions, and user acceptance test plans. Add for good measure software quality assurance plans, configuration management plans, security plans, business continuity plans, and a performance measurement plan for the Feds. For most jurisdictions (and there are about 40 states in this situation), all of these steps need to be completed early in 2006--in time for use in that year's primaries. Oh, yes. Then there is the "people part" of the effort. There is an organizational change management effort to go along with the shift in the residence of the "official" voter registration record from the counties to the statewide database. There is a training plan for all state and local election staff members who will use the system. There is a "transfer of knowledge" plan to assure that when the implementation vendors or system developers leave, sufficient knowledge will remain in the state election office to maintain and manage the system. There is the data quality plan that has to be administered statewide. Just to really let the optimism break through, here is a statistic that the vendors are not likely to print in their marketing brochures: approximately 80% of major computer projects fail. By fail, we mean (1) they are abandoned, (2) they come in at more than 20% over budget, (3) they are implemented more than 20% late, or (4) they fail to deliver critical functionality required in the initial project specifications. In the coming months, we will include articles in Election TechREPORTS focusing on many of the issues that will be involved with implementing statewide voter registration systems and purchasing new vote tally systems. We hope these articles can help avoid some of the major mistakes made in these major system implementations. In addition to InfoSENTRY's work assisting county election staffs as they implement election management information systems, we are delighted to have helped directly four states get an early start on their efforts to implement statewide voter registration systems. We have seen that systems in even "small" states will take millions of dollars and 2 - 3 years to implement successfully--notwithstanding vendor claims they can do it in a year. We maintain a database on states that have implemented statewide systems and know that the path between a simple data file of registered voters and the kind of statewide system mandated in the new law is neither short nor smooth. We look forward to working with election authorities to provide complete project management, RFP development, vendor proposal review, contract negotiation, quality assurance reviews, and acceptance testing as they move to meet the mandates of the new Federal election law requirements--and the requirements to carry out free and fair elections. Feature Organization: National Association of State Election Directors The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) is a private, non-profit association of the Nation's state election directors. Many are appointed staff directors, reporting to elected office holders such as Secretaries of State. Others are officials, appointed by elected officeholders or state boards of elections. Their authority and responsibilities vary substantially according to their state statutes and relationships with their state's elected officeholders, legislatures, the counties, and political climates. However, they come together at least twice each year as NASED. Typically, NASED meets in Washington, D.C. for its winter meeting and out in the nation for its summer meeting. NASED is currently chaired by Brook Thompson, who is the Director of the Tennessee Secretary of State's Elections Division. The President Elect is Alice P. Miller, Executive Director of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics. The Vice President is Denise Miller with the Bureau of Elections in New Mexico. The Council of State Governments (CSG), located in the Hall of the States on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, has for years provided invaluable secretariat services to NASED. At the recent NASED summer meeting in San Antonio, NASED members got the opportunity to meet Melinda Glazer, CSG's new Deputy Policy Analyst & Affiliate Coordinator, who provides front-line staff services to NASED. Melinda brings considerable association experience to her assignment with NASED. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Melinda moved to Washington, D.C. to begin her career in public policy. She began her career as a staff/research assistant for John Freshman Associates, an environmental consulting firm, where she worked on a variety of water rights projects for counties across the country. In order to expand her policy background to several legislative issues, including environmental policy, Melinda joined the Government Affairs Office for the Associated Builders and Contractors Association, where she concentrated on environmental policy as well as, various labor policy issues. Melinda has been with NASED since May 2002. As anyone who has staffed association meetings knows, it is not easy to put together a great program and arrange smooth logistics for a group of subject matter experts. However, judging by the excellent San Antonio meeting, Melinda will continue the CSG tradition of providing excellent staff support to NASED. Please click here to read a copy of our white paper on User Acceptance Testing. Please click here to read a copy of our white paper on After Action Reviews as a formal--but inexpensive and quick--way to capture lessons learned in information system projects. Please click here to visit our main election systems consulting page. It has a table of contents for previous newsletter issues. Please visit our main information technology consulting page and our information technology security and recovery page. They contain brief descriptions of some of our previous consulting engagements, including those for election jurisdictions. Please contact et@infosentry.com if you would like to get a PDF version or a laser printed copy of this newsletter for distribution in your election office. InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. 2 Hannover Square, Suite 1740 Raleigh, NC 27601 P.O. Box 28048, Raleigh, NC 27611 Phone: 919.838.8570 Glenn Newkirk's e-mail: glenn_newkirk@infosentry.com Copyright 2002, InfoSENTRY® Services, Inc. All fights reserved. Reproduction and dissemination without the express written permission of InfoSENTRY® Services, Inc. is strictly prohibited. InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. publishes Election TechREPORTS monthly, focusing on technology trends and issues in election offices. From time to time, Election TechReports might mention the name of vendors' hardware or software products. However, InfoSENTRY® Services is completely independent from hardware and software vendors. Mentions of vendors' hardware and software products in no way constitutes an endorsement or indication of worthiness for those vendors or products.

The passage of the Federal election reform bill (H.R. 3295--"Help America Vote Act") portends one of the greatest shifts of authority and responsibility for election administration in the nation's history. Along with all the political and organizational changes in the relationship among county, state, and federal election authorities, there is a huge change coming in management and administration of voter registration data. For many state and local election authorities, it will be one of the most significant challenges they have faced.

In over half the states, offices that have never had responsibility for computer systems much larger than the local area networks in their offices will have

to design, implement, and start to manage very large systems. Apart from the huge expenditures the Feds will provide for new voting equipment, one of the longer term changes will be in the bill's requirements for statewide voter registration systems. Many a seasoned observer believe the $3.9 bill Fed contribution will be only a down payment toward meeting these requirements. One national election observer estimates the total price tag will be between $10 billion and $15 billion. Others place the total cost higher.

Immediately after the bill passed and these numbers became more real, we imagine that in some of the nation's largest information technology corporations, meetings occurred along these lines:

SENIOR MARKETING VP: "Okay, I saw on the news that Congress passed some kind of bill about elections that has billions in it for new voting equipment and computer systems. I heard there is a lot more money out there that the states will have to pony up to make all this stuff work. Who knows anything about elections and voting?"

SENIOR MARKETING VP: Oh, come on! There's a lot of money out there! So, who has voted in the past couple of years?

SENIOR MARKETING VP: ALRIGHTY, THEN! You are the Director of our new Election Services Division! Now get out there and put a plan together to capture 25% of this market!

Far fetched? Not really. There will be a quick move in many boardrooms to find, develop, or buy expertise in this market. Consulting firms will put together quick white papers and marketing brochures on their vision of tomorrow's voting systems and voter registration systems--even though they know little or nothing about elections administration.

It will be a "Buyer Beware" market. Very few state election officials have experience managing data critical to election day voting. Very few state election officials and vendors have implemented statewide information systems.

As one of staff member in an election office commented, you get an idea of the size and cost of it all when you realize that in most states there will be one voter registration database conversion (multiplied by the number of counties), one major point-to-point data circuit (multiplied by the number of counties), one hardware or LAN implementation (multiplied by the number of counties), one set of staff trained on the new system (multiplied by the number of counties), one set of operational procedures developed and implemented (multiplied by the number of counties)...you get the idea.

Any statewide information system is a big deal! Finding someone experienced in operating election systems AND in implementing statewide data networks will not be easy...and you will not find those resources in most of the firms rushing into the market.

There are huge jobs to be done and the starting system vendor lineup is thin on successful track records and experience in installing statewide systems. Between now and 2006, Chief State Election Offices will have the pleasure of developing statewide election plans and implementing what will be one of the largest mission critical information networks in their respective states. They will have to prepare statewide election plans, project management plans, needs assessments, requirements analyses, detail and technical designs, RFPs, proposal evaluations, contracts, implementation plans, data conversions, and user acceptance test plans. Add for good measure software quality assurance plans, configuration management plans, security plans, business continuity plans, and a performance measurement plan for the Feds. For most jurisdictions (and there are about 40 states in this situation), all of these steps need to be completed early in 2006--in time for use in that year's primaries.

Oh, yes. Then there is the "people part" of the effort. There is an organizational change management effort to go along with the shift in the residence of the "official" voter registration record from the counties to the statewide database. There is a training plan for all state and local election staff members who will use the system. There is a "transfer of knowledge" plan to assure that when the implementation vendors or system developers leave, sufficient knowledge will remain in the state election office to maintain and manage the system. There is the data quality plan that has to be administered statewide.

Just to really let the optimism break through, here is a statistic that the vendors are not likely to print in their marketing brochures: approximately 80% of major computer projects fail. By fail, we mean (1) they are abandoned, (2) they come in at more than 20% over budget, (3) they are implemented more than 20% late, or (4) they fail to deliver critical functionality required in the initial project specifications.

In the coming months, we will include articles in Election TechREPORTS focusing on many of the issues that will be involved with implementing statewide voter registration systems and purchasing new vote tally systems. We hope these articles can help avoid some of the major mistakes made in these major system implementations.

In addition to InfoSENTRY's work assisting county election staffs as they implement election management information systems, we are delighted to have helped directly four states get an early start on their efforts to implement statewide voter registration systems. We have seen that systems in even "small" states will take millions of dollars and 2 - 3 years to implement successfully--notwithstanding vendor claims they can do it in a year. We maintain a database on states that have implemented statewide systems and know that the path between a simple data file of registered voters and the kind of statewide system mandated in the new law is neither short nor smooth.

We look forward to working with election authorities to provide complete project management, RFP development, vendor proposal review, contract negotiation, quality assurance reviews, and acceptance testing as they move to meet the mandates of the new Federal election law requirements--and the requirements to carry out free and fair elections.

The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) is a private, non-profit association of the Nation's state election directors. Many are appointed staff directors, reporting to elected office holders such as Secretaries of State. Others are officials, appointed by elected officeholders or state boards of elections. Their authority and responsibilities vary substantially according to their state statutes and relationships with their state's elected officeholders, legislatures, the counties, and political climates.

However, they come together at least twice each year as NASED. Typically, NASED meets in Washington, D.C. for its winter meeting and out in the nation for its summer meeting. NASED is currently chaired by Brook Thompson, who is the Director of the Tennessee Secretary of State's Elections Division. The President Elect is Alice P. Miller, Executive Director of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics. The Vice President is Denise Miller with the Bureau of Elections in New Mexico.

The Council of State Governments (CSG), located in the Hall of the States on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, has for years provided invaluable secretariat services to NASED.

At the recent NASED summer meeting in San Antonio, NASED members got the opportunity to meet Melinda Glazer, CSG's new Deputy Policy Analyst & Affiliate Coordinator, who provides front-line staff services to NASED.

Melinda brings considerable association experience to her assignment with NASED.

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Melinda moved to Washington, D.C. to begin her career in public policy. She began her career as a staff/research assistant for John Freshman Associates, an environmental consulting firm, where she worked on a variety of water rights projects for counties across the country. In order to expand her policy background to several legislative issues, including environmental policy, Melinda joined the Government Affairs Office for the Associated Builders and Contractors Association, where she concentrated on environmental policy as well as, various labor policy issues. Melinda has been with NASED since May 2002.

As anyone who has staffed association meetings knows, it is not easy to put together a great program and arrange smooth logistics for a group of subject matter experts. However, judging by the excellent San Antonio meeting, Melinda will continue the CSG tradition of providing excellent staff support to NASED.

Please click here to read a copy of our white paper on After Action Reviews as a formal--but inexpensive and quick--way to capture lessons learned in information system projects.

Please click here to visit our main election systems consulting page. It has a table of contents for previous newsletter issues.

Please contact et@infosentry.com if you would like to get a PDF version or a laser printed copy of this newsletter for distribution in your election office.

InfoSENTRY Services, Inc.
2 Hannover Square, Suite 1740 Raleigh, NC 27601
P.O. Box 28048, Raleigh, NC 27611
Phone: 919.838.8570
Glenn Newkirk's e-mail: glenn_newkirk@infosentry.com

Copyright 2002, InfoSENTRY® Services, Inc. All fights reserved. Reproduction and dissemination without the express written permission of InfoSENTRY® Services, Inc. is strictly prohibited. InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. publishes Election TechREPORTS monthly, focusing on technology trends and issues in election offices. From time to time, Election TechReports might mention the name of vendors' hardware or software products. However, InfoSENTRY® Services is completely independent from hardware and software vendors. Mentions of vendors' hardware and software products in no way constitutes an endorsement or indication of worthiness for those vendors or products.