Research and Development of Electronic Voting Systems based on Formal Methods of Risk Assessment and Management focusing on the drawing of Public Confidence.

Technology solution

Technology choice: Mainly (or only) open standards, Open source software

Main results, benefits and impacts

1. The design and implementation of an electronic voting information system that will be capable to support technically from simple processes of opinion polls up to national elections. 2. The application of formal design methods so as to assure the systematic monitoring and control of all the phases of system development process as well as corresponding interventions, where required. 3. The design of the system components in such a way that they will be rendered and re-usable, under the form of a library. 4. The integration of the required degree of confidence in the final system, at the phase of its design as well as at the duration of its operation. This was based on an trust architecture which? considers trust as an attribute that is progressively been built from the physical layer of the system towards the way that it is presented to the end users. The final deliverable of the project was a large scale, distributed system to support electronic voting.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Lessons learnt

1) How to apply good design practices (open source tools and risk management) from design to implementation. 2) How to build security into the system during the design and implementation phases, through a layer architecture in order to decrease complexity. 3) eVoting is still an elusive target: few people seem to trust systems and be willing to use an Internet-based platform. More work needs to be done, both in technical as well as social terms. Scope: National