OASIS TC call for participation: Election and Voter Services

[Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>]

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The Election and Voter
Services Committee has been proposed by Gregg McGilvray, election.com
(chair); Oliver Bell, Microsoft; and Ed McLaughlin, Accenture.

The request for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC process, and
is appended to this email.

To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS
member organization or an Individual member of OASIS, 2) notify the
committee chair, Gregg McGilvray (gregg@election.com), of your intent to
participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting, and 3) participate
in the first meeting on 15 May, 2001. You should also subscribe to the TC's
discussion list. (For the procedure for joining after the first meeting see
the TC process at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml.)

The mail list election-services@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee
discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members should
subscribe to the list. Do this by sending a message to
election-services-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as
the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not
make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC
chair as described in the preceeding paragraph.)


</karl>
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org




Submission To OASIS for the Creation of a Technical Committee

Committee Name: Election and Voter Services Committee

Purpose:  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.

Implementation: The standard under development by election.com, Inc. will be
made available for review and revision and can be expanded upon as
necessary. A phased approach will be used to implement the standard due to
the number of aspects being considered by the standard.

Schedule and Deliverables:

- 29 March 2001: Call for Participation sent out
- 15 May 2001: Inaugural Meeting of the Committee
- 3 months after initial meeting : Initial Phase 1 Requirements Document
delivered
- 6 months after initial meeting: Initial Phase 1 Draft Document delivered
- 9 months after initial meeting : Initial Phase 1 Final Document delivered

Language: The specification will be prepared in English.

Meeting Schedule:

15 May 2001: First meeting to be conducted in person at the headquarters of
election.com, Inc. in Garden City, New York with a dial-in teleconference
number provided by election.com.

Subsequent face-to-face meetings will occur every other month with bi-weekly
teleconference calls.

Initial Participants:

- Gregg McGilvray (Chair), election.com and Individual member of OASIS,
gregg@election.com
- Oliver Bell, Microsoft Corp, oliverb@microsoft.com
- Ed McLaughlin, Accenture, edward.n.mclaughlan@accenture.com

Committee Sponsors: Election.com will sponsor all on site and teleconference
meetings.


==================

Election Markup Language (EML) Specification

Introduction

A schema will be proposed to the Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for the purpose of setting an
information and data interchange standard for the Election Services
Industry.  Election Services is defined to mean any components needed to
conduct a private or public election.  Private elections are conducted for
publicly traded corporations, trade associations, labor unions, pension
funds, credit unions, not-for-profit organizations, etc.  Public elections
are conducted domestically and internationally for municipalities,
governments, jurisdictions, special districts and any other group wishing to
solicit public opinion.  The services performed for all 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.

The Need

This standard will facilitate interoperability among various suppliers of
election hardware, software, and services.  It is recognized that there are
many players in the field employing different levels of automation.  Those
functional areas not automated can be more easily automated if a common way
of doing business existed.  The functional areas that are automated operate
on many different platforms employing different architectures, some of which
have never done data interchange, especially with unlike environments.  The
need to have a consistent, auditable, automated election system has been
evidenced in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election and this need is also
pervasive worldwide, especially in developing democracies.  New global
election processes are being developed, and voting procedures and voting
cultures must be incorporated into these processes.  There must be a uniform
way to allow existing systems to interact with other systems as these new
processes evolve and are adopted.

The Solution

The solution is to create a standard based on XML that will provide all the
intercommunication needs for this industry.  XML is an excellent choice for
several reasons. XML is sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an
international standards body supported by many of the major hardware and
software vendors.  XML is an emerging standard based on a mature standard,
SGML.  SGML has given rise to HTML, a widely used and understood Internet
technology.   XML is text based, which means that a vast number of devices
and software components can use it.  XML encourages groups and industries to
form common interchange standards using easy-to- understand tools.  Lastly
XML is flexible and allows for modifications to be proposed and made during
the course of time.  This will allow the industry to evolve separately from
the technology. Election needs will drive the evolutionary process and not
be a result of the technology employed.

The Implementation

Suitable partners will be found to propose and form an OASIS Technical
committee.  OASIS is a vendor independent, open standards body and a
proponent of vertical industry groups for the purpose of interoperability.
This committee will be called the Election and Voter Service Committee.  The
purpose will be to propose and develop the Election Markup Language (EML) as
a standard.  EML will include specifications for all aspects of election and
voter services and will be designed to be extensible.  The standard will be
broken down into functional sub-standards and phased into EML over time.
The phases will consist of:

Phase 1 -  Authentication
           Authorization and Profile Identification
           Ballot Delivery
           Vote Delivery and Confirmation

Phase 2 -  Results Reporting
           New Member/Voter Application
           Membership/Voter Role Maintenance
           Absentee/Expatriate Request for Ballots
           Election Notification

Phase 3 -  Election Calendaring
           Redistricting
           TBD

There should also be dialogue with other Technical Committees such as the
Security Services Committee to form Joint Committees for the purpose of
interoperability and reuse of existing standards.

The Standard

Once the committee is formed election.com will submit the standard that it
has been developing and solicit input from other partners and vendors.