OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee: Meeting 5th September 2002

Attendees: 
London: John Borras (JB) (Chairman) UK e-Envoy, Farah Ahmed (FA) (Secretary) UK e-Envoy, John Ross (JR) UK e-Envoy, Paul Spencer (PS) UK e-Envoy, Charbel Aoun (CA) Election.com, John Stevens (JS) British Telecom, Nazir Mullah (NM) Oracle.

Phone: Hans von Spakovsky (HVS) US Federal Justice Dept, Tim Bovey (TB) Associated Press, Bruce Elton (BE) Oracle, John Hornbaker (JH) VoteHere.

Apologies: Jason Kitkat

1.	Minutes of the last meeting and actions arising

JB reported that all actions have been dealt although he was still waiting for responses from Patrick Gannon.  Action: JB to follow up.

2.	Review of EML version 2.01B – result of vote

JB reported he had received 11 out of 14 possible votes from the committee; all ‘yes’ returns. JB confirmed that v2 can now be adopted under OASIS rules.   Action: FA to publish v2 on the OASIS website.

3.	Issues for EML version 3

JB noted that Nitan Malik raised a number of issues relating to the application of EML v2 in the USA.  JB recommended that the committee should regard v2 as a baseline and consider the issues when developing v3.  Members endorsed this course of action.

JB summarised the UK government’s commitment to increasing the number of local e-voting pilots in the 2003.  With this in mind the UK-EML specifications are currently being completed and as part of that were identifying generic EML issues.  JB said that the UK was continually learning lessons as it progressed and were aiming to finalise the specifications by October.  Action: JB to distribute the list of all issues for further discussion.

4.	Proposals for localisation of EML

UK-EML has optional specifications because it is ‘country based’. JB said that it is important for everyone to learn from the 2003 pilots as there is no example of such an application to-date.

PS summarised his findings.  The EML has optional, mandatory and forbidden fields that differ from country to country depending on law.  PS looked for a way to include these specifications in a way that is easy to understand, build and change.  PS said that this could be accomplished by modifying the core EML schemas.  However the schemas are not resilient to change and would not meet all the requirements.

PS suggested that the best solution would be the use of Schematron which is a ISO compliant schema language based on XSLT.  The advantage of using this product is that it allows additional rules to be made within it.  PS continued by saying that it is simple to write and easy to implement.  UK would be piloting Schematron in the local elections.  Action:  PS to upload demo onto the Boyning’s website.

NM raised the issue as to it being a ‘two stage’ process which involved performance overheads that have not be previously tested.  JR said that it can be made into a one stage process.  PS agreed that there are various options to hand and the each pilot case can choose to have both EML and UK-EML validation or just one.  JH said that Schematron looks interesting and appears to be the best approach. JB asked whether there was any alternative.  Action:  All to review and return with feedback. 

JH said it would be worthwhile to speak to any other organisation that has taken similar standards and implemented them in the real world, for example IEEE.  JB agreed it would be good to investigate this further.

BE agreed with the points made by NM.  NM emphasised the need to do further testing.  BE called for an accreditation processed to be implemented during development of the EML.

5.	Testing – Progress reports from members

JB stated that there was a need for a firmer handle on the EML testing process.  A positive and clear test plan could then be implemented into the Local Authority elections.

CA said there should be a full test on the pilot with the exclusion of the nomination schema.  V3 is needed for implementation for it to evolve.

CA mentioned that there is no full implementation in the USA although he was aware of some local pilots.  JB called for a report back mechanism from all the test pilots.

HSV raised the issue of the military voting from overseas and whether this aspect would be included in the 2003 pilots.  JS said that it was desirable and possible.  JB said that the UK MoD currently uses postal voting. 

JB mentioned the Swiss Canton e-election pilots and said that because they are willing to use EML we could include them into the test plan.  JB stressed that we would need a minimum of three tests.  It was decided that parish elections/referendums are all of the same and might not be considered as separate pilots. It was decided that the test plan could include private elections.  Action: JB to investigate this further and post a test plan on the website.

CA asked whether there were US local elections that can be used or learned from.  HSV said that this decision was down to the local election officials and currently the environment was not ready for any move to such a new area.   HSV mentioned that they were currently waiting for the Election Reform Bill to be passed through Congress.

CA said that it would help election.com if there were a neutral body who would be able to get things moving in the USA.  JB said that it would be advisable to contact Stuart Valentine.  HSV stated that he would be happy to co-ordinate a positive test site to get things moving.  Action: JB and HSV to contact Staurt Valentine.

6.	IPR Statements

JB said that there is a need for a clear declaration that can be put up on the OASIS site.  Action:  All to put all positives or nils onto the website via FA. 

7.	AOB

None to report.

8.	Dates and locations of future meetings

22 October – Teleconference commencing at 16:00 BST

12 December – Face-to-face and Teleconference at XML 2002 Conference in Baltimore.  Meeting to commence at 10:00 EDT.