Services

Digital Elections Pty Ltd has a range of Services to support eVACS® and elections

Election support services include:

  • Assistance with formatting eVACS® for a particular election
  • Assistance with securing data retention from a particular election for auditing purposes
  • Installation of election specific software on voting servers and other servers
  • Installation of voting machine software for each election if required (This is a once-only service unless the hardware is used for other purposes between elections)
  • Provision of technical support during election period for eVACS® software and any hardware provided

Subsequent customisation services

  • The following changes generate subsequent customisation and will be undertaken by Digital Elections Pty Ltd when required:
  • Changes to requirements for a particular jurisdiction requiring changes to their customised election software, and
  • Changes to reflect upgrades to operating systems and changes to hardware, including peripherals.

Training

Training in the use of the system, including on initial purchase and as users are replaced.

Maintenance

An annual maintenance contract is available. The initial system delivered must meet the requirements of the client. Changes are likely to be required when either the client’s requirements change, most likely due to legislative change, or there are changes to hardware, including peripherals, and operating systems. These are addressed via customisation services or via an annual maintenance contract if preferred.

The following White Papers can be downloaded:

Software Engineering Practices that Count by Clive Boughton PhD (PDF 119KB)

A case study of the development of the ACT electronic voting and counting system for use in the 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly election: its successes and lessons learnt. This paper discusses what decisions and actions led to project success through the lifecycle from negotiation of the contract and through the software development and deployment lifecycle.

Credible Election Software – eVACS® by Clive Boughton PhD, and Carol Boughton MSc, FAICD (PDF 407KB)

Trusted computer systems have been constructed. However, only by people possessing high skills, who know what trust means and who work hard to identify all potential points of failure. Electronic election systems need to be trusted systems. There is no room for apathy. This paper discusses what it took in terms of requirements, development and operational practices to implement an electronic voting and counting system that could maintain elector trust and deflect ignorant, negative claims of impropriety.

eVACS® and ACT Legislative Assembly Elections by Software Improvements (PDF 3.54MB)

This paper describes the electronic voting and counting systems used for the 2001 and 2004 ACT Legislative Assembly Elections, in terms of their requirements, features, development, testing, auditing and review.

Democracy and Electronic Voting with eVACS® By Carol Boughton MSc, FAICD (PDF 414KB)

Three democratic values have been identified as essential to any voting system adopted in the USA. These are equality, security and transparency. Public consultations in the UK led to the identification of three principles to form the minimum requirements of a democratic election procedure. These were: the doorkeeper principle for ensuring voter eligibility, the secrecy principle, and the verification, tally and audit principle. Exactly these requirements were specified for the electronic voting and counting system – eVACS®. This paper discusses how eVACS® meets these requirements.

Electronic Voting Best Practices by Michael Bowern (PDF 48.3KB)

This paper reviews a report from a symposium on electronic voting held at Harvards Kennedy School of Government in June 2004. It discusses the proposed best practices in the light of experiences of electronic voting in Australia with eVACS®, and in the broader context of the full election system and processes.

The following downloadable brochures are available: