[EM] E-Government Bulletin - July 2001 (part- FWD)

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

From:                   "Dan Jellinek" <dan at headstar.com>
To:                     <egovbulletin at headstar.com>
Subject:                E-Government Bulletin - July 2001
Date sent:              Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:26:33 +0100
***
E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
The Email Newsletter On Electronic Government,
UK And Worldwide.

ISSUE 101, JULY 2001
***
SECTION TWO: SPECIAL REPORT
- FREE SOFTWARE (PART II)

FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS
By Dan Jellinek  dan at headstar.com

As governments and public bodies across Europe begin to wise up to the
benefits of using free and open source software (see E-Government
Bulletin, June 2001) others have been extolling its democratic virtues
for some time.

Jason Kitkat, founder of the FREE e-democracy project (www.free-
project.org), is creating a piece of free Java Internet-voting
software that could eventually be used to hold online elections.

Kitkat started the project in 1999 when he was still at university.
"There had been a buzz around Internet voting, with companies set up
to write software, but when I saw what was available I couldn't
believe how badly designed it was." Often, he said, software did not
sufficiently protect voter privacy with guards against extracting
information on who votes for whom, a cornerstone of free democracy.

So he decided to develop voting software under the GNU General Public
License for free software (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html - see
last issue). Taking advantage of the vast global collaborative
development community for GNU GPL software is the only way to compete
with the major proprietary software developers, Kitkat says. A core
group of interested developers soon formed.

Thus the 'GNU.FREE Internet Voting Software' was born, and is
currently in version 1.6, a 'maturing' phase which involves combining
it with a poll management system that would allow it to be used in
conjunction with other types of poll like postal voting to ensure
no-one votes twice.

The fact that the voting software is and will remain free to use and
develop does not mean that it can never be a commercial prospect:
Kitkat hopes to make some money back through consultancy to
organisations using the software like private companies for
shareholder votes or unions for membership ballots.

But its potential use on democratic elections or referenda means it is
vital that the software code itself is open and can be freely
developed by others, he says. "With proprietary software there is a
potential for back- doors, secret bits of code that could be used to
rig a vote that could be hard to spot. With proportional
representation voting systems in particular it is so hard to spot
small changes that could have subtle effects on the outcome."

He says his impression of the current government's attitude to free
and open source software is that: "They are not scared of it, but they
tend to use commercial systems because they want someone to point a
finger at if it goes wrong. The barriers to using free software are
both cultural and legal - large systems have to go through a tendering
process so tend to be developed by large companies that use their own
software. But change is only a matter of time."

Another major open source democracy project is the Smart Initiatives
Initiative, led by Marc Strassman in California. The initiative -
covered at length in E-Government bulletin issues 93 and 94 (see
http://www.headstar.com/egb/archive.html) - proposes a combination of
open source PKI cryptography software and open source voting software
to create a virtual petitioning system that would allow Californian
citizens to have formal online input into the system of state
government.

The open development principle extends beyond high level software
programming to web development. One notable public service web project
with an open source flavour to it was INFOVILLE, a three-year European
project involving seven communities in six countries: Hampshire County
Council; Valencia in Spain; Bavaria and Meissen in Germany; Torino in
Italy; the National Association of Local Authorities in Denmark; and
Vara in Sweden. Though its formal funding period recently came to an
end, most of the partners are continuing to develop aspects of the
work.

The project developed a 'common technical specification' for a generic
web, digital TV, kiosk and mobile phone interface for public
information in four core areas: public administration information and
services; education and training; transport and electronic commerce.

The specification did not go down to the level of programming code but
in developing designs, structures and guidelines for web services
openly and allowing any public body to freely draw on the results it
extended the open source ethos to web development.

"The common specification is a vital document setting out navigation
and usability standards, best practice guidelines and research with
end users", says Sue Faulkner, who is leading ongoing INFOVILLE work
in Hampshire. "We pooled our knowledge, and the aim was that any
region in Europe could benefit".

The specification is due to be posted onto the web shortly at:
http://digitalsites.infoville.net/

And Hampshire Infoville project information can be found at:
http://www.infoville.org.uk/help/help_projectdescription.htm

There are many who feel the open source software ethos has even
broader applications to the democratic and governmental process in
general, acting as an example of how large communities of people can
act in a truly open and collaborative way online.

In a virtual debate hosted last year by the bulletin's publisher
Headstar, 'Boosting the net economy 2000'
(http://www.netecon2000.com), Michael Gurstein of the Technical
University of British Columbia in Canada, said: "The open source model
of software development presents one implicit model of what Internet
enabled global decision-making, representation and participation might
look like.

"It may not be especially pretty (or democratic) but at least it is
truer to the spirit of the times than the auto-reply systems that pass
for making use of the new media in most governmental jurisdictions."

[Section two ends]