Page 8 - GCN, April/May 2018

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Most districts satisfied with their voting machines
BY DEREK B. JOHNSON
Despite headlines touting security vulnerabilities in voting equipment, state and local election officials seem satisfied with the performance of their voting machines and related equipment.
count accuracy, efficiency and ease of maintenance compared to jurisdictions using the other major model, optical scan ballots. According to the GAO survey, officials rated optical scan ballots higher for defenses against hacking, but DRE machines earned higher scores for protection from threats unrelated to cybersecurity.
Out-of-date technology and equipment have some election administrators and third-party experts concerned, but GAO said the unease has not trickled down to local election jurisdictions.
“We estimate that jurisdictions
with 93 percent of the population did not experience equipment errors or malfunctions on a ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ common basis during the election,” auditors wrote.
Additionally, localities representing about 96 percent of the country’s population said they were very or generally satisfied with the way their voting equipment performed in 2016.
The report came at the request of Congress, which is still grappling with fallout from the 2016 presidential election and concerns about aging and insecure voting machines. GAO
identified four key factors that election officials consider when deciding whether to replace old voting equipment: cost; the ability to meet federal, state and local standards; timely maintenance and vendor support; and overall performance.
Currently, 13 states rely in whole or in part on paperless voting systems. One of those states, Pennsylvania, is frequently considered a critical swing state during presidential elections and, according
to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, had 6.7 million registered voters who voted on machines without paper backups of any kind — the most in the country.
On April 12, Pennsylvania’s
acting secretary of state ordered all jurisdictions to have voter-verifiable paper-record voting systems in place no later than Dec. 31, 2019.
The recently passed omnibus spending package includes $380 million in assistance to states to replace outdated voting equipment, while bipartisan legislation in Congress
to do more recently picked up the support of Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence leaders Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.).•
Thirty-two percent of voters voted in jurisdictions that used direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, which often lack paper backups and which security experts believe are susceptible to being hacked, a recent Government Accountability Office report found.
Security concerns aside, DRE machine users reported higher rates of satisfaction when it came to vote
What one agency learned from its bot pilot
BY SARA FRIEDMAN
After launching a robotic process automation pilot project, officials at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service realized the bots would need oversight and management, just as human workers do.
The Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation’s recent RPA pilot project automated highly repetitive manual tasks and processes, such
as copying and pasting information
from different financial management systems. Officials cited four key takeaways:
1. Start small to keep mistakes more manageable and improve the “educational journey” that comes with building and maintaining the RPA software.
2. Know that it requires a team effort to make an RPA project successful. Including people with different skill sets on the project will inject efficiency into the processes and
deliver the greatest return on the RPA investment.
3. Keep the bots busy, ensuring that they are fully occupied. An RPA can run 24/7 and work on more than one task, making it essential that managers take advantage of that capability to get the best value for the agency.
4. Differentiate duties, such
as system tasks versus operational processes, to ensure the integrity of automated processes and avoid the risk of fraud, waste or abuse. •
8 GCN APRIL/MAY 2018 • GCN.COM
LISA F. YOUNG/SHUTTERSTOCK