United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

The Canton Zurich has the largest population of all 26 Swiss cantons, approximately 1.2 million. The Statistical Office of the Canton Zurich (www.statistik.zh.ch) belongs to the Ministry of Justice and Interior. It is the authority responsible for planning and conducting federal and local elections and referenda. As part of this responsibility, the Statistical Office must provide the technological means for citizens and local authorities to conduct and participate in elections and referenda. Five years ago, the Statistical Office introduced a fully computerized election and referendum system that connected all 171 communities, allowing the Statistical Office to monitor the progress and assist the communities on voting days. Two years later, the Statistical Office started the e-voting pilot-project, which was successfully completed in Spring of 2006. Of the 45 employees of the Statistical Office, about 20 are involved in elections and referenda, including planning and technological support for communities, forecasting during elections and referenda, analysis of the results immediately after closure of the ballot boxes, and training of community officers for all issues regarding elections and referenda.

The Statistical Office has a leading role regarding the design and implementation of various e-government projects. This refers to the introduction of election and referendum software systems, the Zurich e-voting system, but also database technologies to merge different citizen registers, which are scattered over various government agencies and local communities. Another important ICT-based assignment is to report the results of data analysis, including predictions and results of elections and referenda, in geographical information systems on the Internet. For its newest GIS solution, the Statistical Office recently received the Prix Carto, issued by the Swiss Cartographical Association for the most innovative solution in 2006. The Zurich e-voting system here presented was awarded the Swiss ICT prize for best software in 2005.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The Zurich e-voting system is a unique solution and characterized by its modular and service-oriented architecture, which allows the integration of all types of media for e-voting, including Internet, mobile phone, TV, Palm or any other digital technology. It promotes the implementation of e-voting because its architecture can easily be integrated in existing software solutions, without compromising its high security standard. Both national and local authorities have embraced the system because it can be used both in a centralized and in a decentralized manner. The broad range of technologies promotes citizen involvement in public decision making processes, while the full integration of the digital system with the traditional ballot box system prevents the possibility of a digital divide among the population. The service-oriented structure is ideal because it covers the full range of voting concepts, including national votes on referenda, votes on citizen initiatives with counter referendum and contingency plan, as well as majority elections and proportional elections with predefined party lists. For majority elections, the system not only accommodates a predefined list of candidates, it even allows for elections where all citizens are eligible to be elected, since the full electorate is stored in the system. Moreover, the system allows individual definition of the opening times of the electronic ballot boxes. Even the coding of the votes can be done by each community individually. The voting officers receive the decoding keys with all the passwords to decode the votes on voting day. To prevent citizens from casting their vote multiple times, several safety features have been installed, which are activated centrally or by the local authorities. The Zurich e-voting system has been realized for a total amount of 2.5 million Swiss Francs development costs and annual reoccurring operational costs of 0.5 million Swiss Francs, which amounts to approximately 4 Swiss Francs per e-vote. The e-voting system for Internet voting and elections can be found at: https://evoting.zh.ch. A fully working emulation of the Zurich e-voting system for Internet and mobile phone elections and referenda can be tested at: http://evotingdemo.zh.ch. The Zurich e-voting system has been successfully tested and applied for federal, local and organizational elections and referenda. It was first tested for the Zurich University board election in 2005, followed by a national referendum. The testing phase was concluded with a proportional election in April, 2006. Since then, e-voting Zurich is in use in three communities in the Canton Zurich; however, all 171 communities could be linked up instantly, as soon as the Swiss Government lifts the 10% electorate restriction for e-voting. Moreover, its service-oriented structure can accommodate any other Swiss canton, or any public and private organization in the world whishing to employ e-voting. This world-wide unique solution to e-voting, which was developed in conjuncture with Unisys, was awarded the prize for best software in 2005 by the Swiss ICT society. Its compelling features were said to be its flexible compliance with complex voting concepts, its service-oriented modular structure allowing for flexible extensions, and its remarkably high security standard.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
- February 1998: Swiss Government defines as part of its ICT strategy the need to test the use of ICT for democratic decision making processes. - August 2000: Swiss Government mandates Federal Chancellery to study the feasibility for e-voting - June 2002: Swiss Parliament creates legal basis for e-voting pilot study - February 2002: Federal Chancellery signs contract with Ministry of the Interior of the Canton Zurich to participate in the e-voting pilot study - October 2003: Unisys wins the bid to develop the Zurich e-voting system and starts its development according to strict specifications - December 2004: first e-voting in Canton Zurich through Internet and mobile phone for the election of the 70 members of the university student board with 93% e-voting participation; of the 1767 people participating in the election, 1582 used the Internet and 205 the mobile phone: only one person used the traditional ballot box - October 2005: first e-voting election in the city of Bulach with a 37% e-voting participation - November 2005: first e-voting for federal and regional voting in three communities with 37% of e-voting participation - April 2006: first e-voting through Internet and mobile phone world-wide for proportional election system with 20% e-voting participation - July 2006: end of pilot project and beginning of regular use of e-voting for any upcoming elections and referenda

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The Swiss parliament created on June 21, 2002 the legal basis for e-voting pilot testing. This legal basis authorizes the Swiss Government, in conjunction with interested cantons, to conduct e-voting tests. Of utmost importance is the assurance of (1) the voting rights, (2) the voting secrecy, (3) the capturing of all votes, and (4) the avoidance of any abuse of the system. At the same time, the parliament required that the tests be monitored scientifically. Special contracts to conduct e-voting tests were signed between the Federal Chancellery and three cantons, one of them being Zurich. The cantons were required to take into account the following four considerations: (1) electronically cast votes cannot be intercepted, changed or rerouted: (2) no third party can obtain knowledge of the cast vote, (3) only registered citizens can vote, and (4) every registered person can vote only once. After signing the contract for e-voting tests, many of the 171 Zurich communities expressed their strong desire to participate in the test phase. However, the restriction by the Swiss Government to allow only 10% of the electorate to participate in e-voting created quite some disappointment among many communities. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the three selected communities was extremely high. The e-voting system had to be tailored to the Swiss decentralized voting structure, allowing each of the 171 communities of the Canton Zurich to manage their own voting register in a decentralized manner. Moreover, it had to take into account all other relevant features of the Swiss elections and referenda rules. For majority elections, the system not only had to accommodate a predefined list of candidates, it even had to allow for the situation where all citizens are eligible to be elected. Also, the system must allow individual definitions of the opening times of the electronic ballot boxes. Each community individually must be able to encode votes. The election officers must then receive the decoding keys with all the passwords to decode the votes on voting day. To prevent citizens from casting their vote multiple times, several safety features will have to been installed, which are then to be activated by the communities.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Any alternative to the traditional ballot box voting must not compromise the fundamental rights of citizens to express their free political will without any technological, psychological or any other restriction or bias. Moreover, e-voting should be an alternative to ballot box voting that has the potential to encourage more citizens to participate in public policy decision making. Finally, e-voting must comply with the same high security standards defined for traditional voting approaches.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The strategy followed to develop the Zurich e-voting system was fourfold. First, voting through the Internet or mobile phone must provide more flexibility and security without additional restrictions or controls. Security, anonymity, and voting secrecy must be assured. Second, the e-voting system must provide a superior service for citizens and communities responsible for elections and referenda. All the currently employed IT-systems must be able to be integrated in the e-voting system, such that the communities must make only minor changes to their elections and referenda processes. Third, passwords and access codes must be strictly confidential. This implies that the print of the ballot codes must comply with the highest security standards. To assure this, the access codes are being printed at three independent printing companies. Fourth, secure servers and software are essential for e-voting and are thus designed as part of a designated security network. Security had to be considered already as part of the design process, e.g., with respect to the logging mechanisms or the possibility for direct system call up. As a result, the e-voting system satisfies all the requirements specified in the law for political rights.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Extensive technological testing was conducted by Unisys. The company developed a special algorithm that would simulate vote casting, vote counting, and the reporting of the results. These tests could reveal some gaps, which would not have been detected during regular applications. The gaps were immediately remedied during the testing phase in 2005. The audit of the system and the internal security audit were done by Swisscom Solutions, the leading telecommunication company in Switzerland. Moreover, the Federal Chancellery conducted its own security audits and proposed some changes regarding the architecture, the user interface, and the password structure. These suggestions have been considered and resulted in an improvement of the system during the test phase in 2005. The adoption of the system has experienced also significant impacts. Due to the high participation in e-voting during the test phase, the university board decided to abolish traditional ballot box voting. As a result, the 2006 elections of the university student board were, for the first time, done solely based on e-voting. This resulted in higher efficiency and lower costs, while not compromising the possibility of the approximately 24,000 students expressing their free political will.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The Zurich e-voting system is fully extendable and transferable due to its server-oriented and modular concept. Any number of voting districts can be defined, where elections and referenda can be done with all kinds of different media, including Internet, mobile phone, TV, Palm, or the regular ballot box voting. The systems’ sustainability and transferability is assured through seven unique features: (1) Due to the characteristics of the layout system, communities can define their own electorate districts, allowing them to enter their district-specific data and information. (2) For any voting device that is in place, a standard procedure is defined based on EML (Electronic Markup Language), which assures the modularity of the system. Any additional voting device can thus be integrated, which assures extraordinarily high user friendliness. (3) The list of candidates must be entered only once in the voting system and can then be taken over by the e-voting system. This reduces the possibility of conflicting data input. (4) The identification and control system, together with the Secure Entry Server (SES), make sure that only registered voters can vote. (5) The heart of the e-voting system is the transfer system, which stores the cast e-votes into the e-voting system. Access is given only through SES, which excludes unauthorized access. Since the design of the transfer system is independent of the visualization system, the integration of new applications and input devices can be done quite easily. (6) Votes and voting rights are encrypted and stored separately. This concept assures that all votes are counted correctly and that the voting rights are not corrupted. All data are stored in parallel on a WORM (write once read many times) system. (7) The open system architecture of the e-voting system allows communities to use their own IT-solutions and to integrate the e-voting system into their own IT-architecture, without compromising security. These seven features make the Zurich e-voting solution fully sustainable and transferable to other cantons in Switzerland and any other organization world-wide.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The modular and service-oriented architecture, which allows the integration of all media for e-voting, including Internet, mobile phone, TV, Palm or any other digital technology, has strongly promoted the adoption and implementation of e-voting. Both national and local authorities have embraced the system because it can both be used in a centralized as well as in a decentralized manner, and because its architecture can easily be integrated in existing software solutions, without compromising its high security standard. Even the coding of the votes can be done by each community individually. The voting officers received the decoding keys with all the passwords to decode the votes on voting day. It turned out that these safety features were crucial, although no malicious attempts have been made to abuse the system. As a result of this integrated approach the voting results could be analyzed independently of the media used to cast the vote. Its service-oriented structure did also promote the use of e-voting because it covers the full range of voting concepts, including national votes on referenda, votes on citizen initiatives with counter referendum and contingency plan, as well as majority elections and proportional elections with predefined party lists. A major advantage was for majority elections. The system not only accommodates a predefined list of candidates, it even works for when all citizens are eligible to be elected, since the full electorate is stored in the system. An additional benefit is that the system allows individual definition of the opening times of the electronic ballot boxes, even though this feature has not yet been used. The broad range of integrated technologies promoted citizen involvement in public decision making processes, while the full integration of the digital system with the traditional ballot box system prevented the possibility of a digital divide among citizens. Clearly, some initial increase of participation in elections and referenda is due to the novelty of the system. However, we are confident that e-voting Zurich will contribute to a higher citizen involvement in public decision making issues. The lessons learned from our testing phase and first year use for regular elections and referenda make us confident of the successful extension of the e-voting system for all 171 communities and to the export to other cantons or any public and private organization that wishes to employ e-voting via Internet and mobile phone. This world-wide unique solution to e-voting, which was developed in conjuncture with Unisys, was awarded the prize for best software in 2005 by the Swiss ICT society. Its compelling features were said to be its flexible compliance with complex elections and referenda concepts, its modular structure allowing for extension, and its remarkably high security standard. The actual e-voting system for Internet-based elections and referenda can be found at: https://evoting.zh.ch. A fully working emulation of the Zurich e-voting system for Internet and mobile phone elections and referenda can be tested at: http://evotingdemo.zh.ch. We are grateful for any comments and suggestions.


Institution Name:		Statistical Office Canton Zurich, Ministry of Justice and Interior
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Giampiero Beroggi
Title:		Director Statistical Office
Telephone/ Fax:		+41 (0)44 255 12 01
Institution's / Project's Website:
E-mail:		giampiero@beroggi.net
Address:		Bleicherweg 5
Postal Code:		8090
City:		Zurich
State/Province:
Country:		Switzerland

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information