Members Approve Election Markup Language 5.0 as OASIS Standard

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

Members Approve Election Markup Language 5.0 as OASIS Standard 

EDS, IBM, Oracle, and Others Collaborate on Secure, Global Standard for
Exchanging Information Between Voting Systems, Software, and Services

Boston, MA, USA; 25 January 2008 - OASIS, the international open standards
consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Election Markup
Language (EML) version 5.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the
highest level of ratification. Developed through an open process by the OASIS
Election and Voter Services Technical Committee, EML supports information
exchange through the complete election process, including candidate nomination,
voter registration and authentication, ballot information, vote casting and
confirmation, tabulation, auditing, and more.

"In the election industry today, there are many different election systems and
a wide variety of components used for many different functions, so the need for
easier integration of different system components has never been greater," said
Dr. Ron Rivest, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "EML is an example of the kind of
consensus-based, publicly available common format that enables the exchange of
electronic records between different components in election systems."

EML is flexible enough to be used for elections and referendums that are fully
e-enabled as well as ones that are primarily paper-based. Designed to
accommodate many languages, dialects, and vocabularies, the standard also
supports various voting regimes. It can be used in both the private and public
sectors.

"The beauty of EML is that it supports the election process without requiring
any changes to traditional methods of conducting elections," said John Borras,
chair of the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. "EML lets
election officials around the world build on existing infrastructure
investments to evolve their systems as new technologies and voting practices
emerge." 

The value of EML is recognized by many public sector agencies. The Council of
Europe has issued a recommendation that its 46 member states use open standards
such as EML for e-election and e-referendum applications. All U.K. electoral
modernisation pilots have used EML, as a means to evaluate the standard's
effectiveness in real elections; feedback from these pilots was incorporated
into version 5.0. The U.S. State of California intends to use EML to provide
election results in its upcoming presidential primary.

"By providing a uniform, secure, and verifiable way for voting systems to
interact, EML safeguards voter confidence in the election process," said
Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. Gannon also serves on the U.S.
Election Assistance Commission's Technical Guidelines Development Committee.
"We applaud the government officials and vendors who collaborated on this
mature, secure standard."

EML was developed under the Royalty-Free on Limited Terms Mode of the OASIS
Intellectual Property Rights Policy. EDS, IBM, and OPT2VOTE  all verified
successful use of EML 5.0, in accordance with eligibility requirements for all
OASIS Standards. 

The OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee continues work on
developing profiles and implementation guidelines for use of EML 5.0.
Participation in the Committee remains open to all government agencies,
companies, non-profit groups, academic institutions, and individuals. Archives
of the work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS offers a
mechanism for public comment. 


Additional information:

OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/election


About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards),
drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for the
global information society. A not-for-profit consortium, OASIS advances
standards for SOA, security, Web services, documents, e-commerce, government
and law, localisation, supply chains, XML processing, and other areas of need
identified by its members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower
cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free
choice of technology. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants
representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact:

Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
+1.941.284.0403 (mobile)

Link to this press release at:
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2008-01-24.php