CeDEM Lightning Talks, Part 1

Krems.
The final session at CeDEM 2011 is a series of five-minute lightning talks – so I’ll try to cover them all in two combined blog posts. Let’s see how we go…

The first speaker is Siobhan Donaghy, whose interest is in the transparency of electronic vote counting: after voting (using traditionally paper ballots and ballot boxes) has taken place, how are the results dealt with? Can technological solutions improve the counting process – and how can we keep the counting process transparent even though counting is no longer manual?

Siobhan says that voter education is key to this; her company’s solutions provide progress counts (much as updates from manual counting processes are usually provided). Additionally, the technology used builds on standard products (conventional scanners, for example). There is also an enhanced audit capability, which is available directly to election officials. All of these systems are also independently certified.

Further, adjudication processes are supported, which provide a full scan of the entire ballot paper, and support dual-screen setups to enable election observers to do their work. Finally, there is enhanced count information, displayed locally and in the central tally room.

Next up is Roumiana Ilieva, who also focusses on e-voting. She addresses the problems of system and information modelling: what is necessary is to develop a preliminary system analysis of e-voting modelling - input and output modelling, procedural steps, and information flows. E-voting is related to various environmental factors, system structures, and other features. A static system analysis using a spatial plan is required. This can take place on a macro- and a micro-level.

E-voting may be examined, for example, macroanalytically only from input, output, and interference perspectives, treating the e-voting process itself as a black box. Microanalysis, on the other hand, focusses on the internal structure of the e-voting process, pursuing a functional analysis of the process; such approaches would focus on information processes in e-voting, for example. These approaches require further investment in technical and usability research.

This is followed by Alois Paulin, who shifts our focus to open data. Open data is largely about using and reusing existing information, but can this be translated to using and reusing property rights? Currently, disputes over the right to do certain things are resolved through the court system – land ownership is stored in a registry system, for example, which is ultimately simply a large database, linking properties to individual citizens.

If read access to such databases is available, that information is public, but can write access also be made available, allowing a kind of ‘remixing’ of property rights? How could this change how we deal with property?

Marta Marcheva completes this first round of lightning talks; she is interested in e-participation strategies on Facebook. Facebook is now a very large social network, and European institutions should begin to make use of that potential – the EU parliament has an official page here, and the nine major European parties also have their own pages.

These institutions’ presence on Facebook right now is simply seen as fancy, trendy, and fun; their presence provokes some curiosity, and users can connect to them to show their political identities. Information interchange is also possible here. Being part of these groups is seen as part of a community; there is also a national identity-building aspect here, with some local pride in the level of participation in specific cities or regions. At the same time, Facebook is also used for criticism and contestation.

How can it play a role in real election processes, though, and how can that role be demonstrated? How can we even analyse the content on these pages, especially given the constantly changing structure of Facebook facilities (you can no longer ‘join’ pages, for example; you simply ‘like’ them now). If lighter forms of participation and mobilisation take place already, what heavier forms can be imagine? And what about other social networks, like Twitter? What new platforms are yet to come?