Re: Electronic Voting

I have interspersed my comments in Jill's message below.

John

On Jun 13, 2009, at 11:01 PM, Jill Bonino wrote:


Hi John and All,

I agree with others so far that we continue further discussion/
research of the
costs and implementation of our own Eballot system.

A $5,500 total cost for a system the AIS owns is far better than
shelling out
$3500 or more per year ad infinitum for the system you and Ruth
described at
the Spring meeting.  Do you have any idea at this point how much
the annual
maintenance of the program would be once it is up and running?


I don't know that we will need a maintenance contract. If we want new
features that would be a new contract. Bug fixes should show up in
the first year. If we do the design and testing correctly we can
minimize those problems. Maintenance contracts are generally meant to
cover ongoing enhancements for a program that is undergoing
continuing development and allow the purchaser to acquire those
enhancements at a reasonable cost.


Could it be
created and beta tested in time to use it for the 2010 ballot season?


I think so, assuming we move on it expeditiously.


Would
the $5,500 approximate cost include all "bug" fixing that could
come up after
implementation?


Yes for a contracted amount of time (my goal would be a year). But, a
comprehensive testing program should discover any errors. However an
error in our requested design criteria, would constitute a change
order and an additional charge.


Would the Electronic Services Committee be in charge of
setting the written specifications for the system?


The Awards Chair should have the final say that the design will meet
the Awards Committee needs and yes I will be very much involved as
will Ruth.



I think we would also need to have a manual backup system for those
judges and
members who will not be able to vote electronically,... OR do we
want to make
voting manditory electronically once we have a system in place?


To me that is a "phased in implementation" issue, and yes I agree
that we will probably need some hard ballots for a number of years.



Overall, I think an electronic system for voting is the way to go.
The future
is here and it is the computer.  It is becoming more of a necessity
every year
to have one to conduct our personal and business business.

Jill

-----Original Message-----

From: John I Jones <JIJONES@usjoneses.com>
Sent: Jun 11, 2009 9:46 PM
To: aisdiscuss@aisboard.org
Subject: [AISdiscuss] Electronic Voting

All,

At the Spring Board Meeting Ruth Barker and I were asked to provide a
more definitive estimate of what it would cost to employ the eBallot
system. In reviewing our conversations with the eBallot
representative, we have come up with this estimate.

Annual license fee ( 4000 users)             $3500.00
Set up the Annual Ballot (on our behalf)            $695.00
Upload user list  (900 names)            $250.00
Provide random user names and passwords            $350.00
Total (first year)            $4795.00
Subsequent years            $3500.00

We would not contract for setting up the annual ballot but might use
some of the other options. The minimum cost for two years would
certainly be $7000.

I have been investigating an alternative, specifically, having a
electronic voting application programmed specifically for us.

In the spirit of full disclosure the contractor I would recommend to
do this is the husband of my niece  Charles (Chip) Miller. Chip is a
graduate of the University of Virginia Comm School (the equivalent of
business schools at other universities) and is very talented. He has
set up his own company doing backend database processing for  web
interfaces.

The application as I have defined it would provide the functionality
that we would need, with fewer bells and whistles (things that we
dont need) than the eBallot system but would provide essentially the
same functionality plus a more convenient interface for doing some of
the major functions. Specifically:

7      Load and manage multiple user constituencies (manually for
single entries and from predefined lists e.g., Excel files, for
groups).
7      Automatically generate and email passwords to users.
7      Load, edit, and manage multiple ballots with different
deadlines.
7      Assign individual users privileges to vote different
(multiple) ballots
7      Provide an attractive easy to use interface for administrative
and voting functions,
7      Provide tabulation of votes in downloadable format(s)
7      Be implemented using languages and systems that are state-of-
the-art and supportable for the lifetime of the application (minimum
of 10 years). That probably means application languages like Ruby in
a Ruby on Rails framework and a MySQL database

Obviously there are a lot more details that go hand in hand with the
above features, but it is not necessary to list all of them. If there
are specific questions, I will be glad to provide more detail.

The application would be designed to support the annual AIS Official
Ballot, the annual Symposium, and any Board measures we would want to
vote on. Additionally, it could be used simultaneously by Sections
and Cooperating Societies if they wanted to.

We could own the application and could, if we wished, have multiple
installations of the application and sell licenses to use it to other
organizations. (Please note that I only said could)

The cost of developing and installing this application would be in
the range of $5000-$5500 probably less. I would propose that half the
cost come from the General Fund and half from the Restricted
Electronic Services Fund.

I will leave a little time for discussion and pending those comments
make a motion to move forward on this. (There will of course be the
standard amount of time allowed for the discussion of a properly
entered and seconded motion as per our standard procedures)

John

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