Author: mopress

But Project Manager Still Predicts Jan. Rollout

By Greg Moses

A project to develop a statewide database for voter registration is running behind schedule, but the state’s manager of the project predicts it will be completed in time to meet a federal deadline of Jan. 1.

“It has taken a little while to get the project on its feet,” says Bob Futrell, who oversees the project for the Texas Secretary of State, “but it’s okay now.”

A mandate to create the Texas Voter Registration/Election Management System (TEAMS) originates in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 which requires all states to have centralized databases by Jan. 1.

“Meeting the January deadline will be a challenge,” said Futrell, speaking by telephone Thursday from his Austin office, “but in my experience these things are always a challenge up front.” Futrell is an expert in the management of software development, holding academic positions at the University of Texas and at Austin Community College. He has also co-authored a textbook in the field.

With an estimated 36,000 hours of work going into the project at an initial cost of $9.5 million, winning bidders IBM and Hart InterCivic promise to deliver a statewide voter registration database, election management, ballot definition, election night reporting, and a jury management system, too.

According to a thick contract that we reviewed earlier this week at the capitol, the state will also pay at least $600,000 per year in Annual Maintenance Fees for five years.

“I can’t stress enough how different this is from an election system,” advised a well-placed source who answered questions about the contract earlier in the week. One way to understand the difference between election system and election management in a Texas context is to contrast the role of the County Clerk who runs the election and the Tax Assessor who manages the voter database.

Hart InterCivic is well known to election activists as the manufacturer of the proprietary eSlate voting terminal and the election system software that goes with it. Election systems take the votes from voters and tabulate them.

The statewide election management system for Texas also begins with proprietary software from Hart InterCivic known as eRegistry. Of the $9.5 million that the state is paying in startup costs for the project, $4.0 million is dedicated to license fees for eRegistry.

“At the time the project began, the Hart software was not fully developed,” says project manager Futrell. “On the one hand, that means there were really a lot of unknowns; on the other hand, we get to shape it.”

A list of about 2,800 detailed requirements for the TEAMS project are nearly ready for approval by the state, says Futrell. That part of the project had been scheduled for approval Feb. 3.

Another significant milestone — a software release known as “Hart One” — is also pending approval. Original plans called for Hart One to be completed by March 15. Futrell says that was the day when Hart provided a URL to access the software, followed in the next several days by a CD, source code to be escrowed, and user manuals. Hart will be paid $975,000 for Hart One when it is finally accepted by the state.

Futrell says the project is still in the first phase or “Prepare Phase” and that the whole project team has recently completed a two-day review of the project. According to early plans, Prepare Phase was scheduled for completion in late January or early February. But Futrell says “unfortunate timing” plays a role in the delays.

In one “unfortunate” conflict, the state had originally scheduled normal work during the November elections of 2004. In another, training of statewide users will fall during the holiday season of 2005.

Futrell predicts the state will close the gap in deadlines during the next two phases of the project, known as “Design” and “Configure” phases. The Design Phase originally scheduled to be completed on April 8 will be pushed back to June 27. But the Configure Phase originally scheduled for completion in mid-December will only be pushed back about a week.

“We still believe that we will have the voter registration part completed in time for the HAVA deadline,” says Futrell. Some of the other election management features may come later.

For some time, the Secretary of State has already been managing voter rolls for 164 counties, says another source with the Secretary of State. HAVA will allow the remaining 90 counties to maintain their own systems, so long as they upload data to the statewide database on a timely basis. The Secretary of State will try to build a system so impressive that all counties will sign up for “real time” service, eliminating themselves as middle managers.

A two-page brochure posted at the Hart website says that eRegistry’s functionality includes:

Voter Registration: Complete Registration Functionality; Validation against Agency Data; Voter Address, Event and Voting Histories; Suppression of Confidential Voter Information; Automated Mass Voter Updates and Mailings; Voter Address; District and Precinct Maintenance; and Redistricting.

Comprehensive Reporting: NVRA reporting; Standard, Ad Hoc, Statistical and Performance-based Reporting.

Election Management: Absentee Balloting n Early Voting; Poll Worker Recruitment, Assignment and Training; Polling Place Management; Poll Book Printing; Candidate Filing; Petition Management; Canvass; Election Results Reporting; Ballot Generation / Definition Capabilities; Public Information Generation, Tracking and Billing.

Imports/Exports in XML Format: Imports agency data and exports voter registration information to other states in XML format for standardized election data exchange.

Imaging: Voter signatures, applications and correspondence; petition pages; poll book pages; voter IDs; provisional ballot applications. Utilizes off-the-shelf scanners.

Automated Processing: Bar Codes for voter correspondence, voting history, updates from poll books, absentee ballot returns, voter sign-in, precinct equipment, supplies, ballot boxes, OCR/ICR for voter application processing

Great care is taken in the Hart portion of the contract to maintain Hart’s ownership, control, and confidentiality over this powerful and comprehensive software technology. The state of Texas, says the contract, “agrees to treat the Source Code and other deposit materials as exceptionally valuable trade secrets.”

For example, the contract prohibits, “adaptation, conversion, reverse engineering, disassembly or de-compilation” of the eRegistry software without Hart’s permission. The state is not even allowed to publish “results of benchmark tests run on the Software” without Hart’s approval. And in the event that Hart determines such results “contain confidential or proprietary information” the contract binds the state to “seek confidential treatment” of the information.

Hart’s intellectual property will include improvements and upgrades made to eRegistry during the contract, but the state has a fifth-year option to buy the whole package “as is” at fair market value.

Part of the complexity of the TEAMS project, says project manager Futrell, is determining which of the 2,800 required functions are already part of the Hart software and which will require customization. Then designers will have to figure out how to “wrap” the custom features around the existing Hart core.

Note: First version posted Mar. 30 with substantial updates following the Futrell interview Mar. 31. The Texas Civil Rights Review has scheduled another contract viewing for the week of Apr. 4.

* * *

Note: following careful review of project documents, this story was corrected on Apr. 17 to reflect that the Hart product of Mar
ch 15 is called “Hart One.”

Part One: Weeks 1-9
Privatization, Knowledge Management,
And a Mappable Future Like You Wouldn’t Believe

By Greg Moses

It is the perfect coincidence. The Texas State Employees Union all dressed in black t-shirts and divided up by senate districts are occupying the North plaza of the state capitol as I walk up. Of course, they want a pay raise, and I hope they get a big one. But they also want to explain why it is a bad idea for the state to shut down offices for Health and Human Services (HHS), lay off state workers, and replace the whole network with privately contracted call centers.

As I shuffle through the tall but narrow doors of power in a crush of unionists who are funneling through, I think about the grim trend of privatization and how it touches on the project that I have come to study this afternoon, a $12 million dollar deal with private contractors to build and maintain a statewide voter registration and election management system known as project TEAM (Texas Election Administration Management).

As I type out the results of things that I found while reading 21 weekly reports filed by the Secretary of State’s (SOS) project manager, I’m going to grumble along with the unionists’ mood of anti-privatization. For instance, I wonder why the existing staff and resources of the Texas Voter Registration System were not placed more fully in control of the project to upgrade and extend the system that they had already been running for the state.

For one thing, as we will see, the existing SOS elections division staff is essential to the project. They know the registration system and they are close partners in developing the system. I have never spoken to any of them, but in the circumstances of their work life, I imagine they must feel like many state workers these days who are enlisted to provide the essential expertise needed for high-powered privatization of public functions.

For another thing, just like the private call centers that will be doing state business for HHS, the functions of the election project are entirely public in their significance, and should be open to the usual processes of public accountability. But when private vendors start handling crucial public functions, like social services and elections, lines get drawn in self-contradictory ways. As I come across documentary trails that lead in the direction of IBM or its chief subcontractor in this project Hart InterCivic a significant shift of terrain takes place.

As a journalist I am very much in the habit of picking up the phone, calling public employees, and asking them questions. And as public employees they are generally helpful and responsive. Just a few days ago a fairly well-placed manager in the Texas bureaucracy took down my question, found the answer and called me back in about five minutes time. Are employees of IBM or Hart InterCivic prepared to follow suit?

The question gets stickier the more unfriendlier the reply. For instance, if a public employee refuses to answer questions about public business, there is a structure of appeals, including open records requests. These systems are not always as responsive as they should be, but at least we can press the question of what should be the public’s right to know.

In the case of private contractors who are doing public business, what should be the public’s right to know?

In the hefty contract for the TEAM project, Hart InterCivic holds the state legally liable for guarding its proprietary secrets. No details of the Hart software are to be discussed with or released to the public without prior written approval.

On the one hand, Hart can argue that software developers anywhere have some rights to their private property. Let’s say a software company is licensing spreadsheet software to the state for bookkeeping purposes. Shouldn’t the state respect the property rights of that software? But here’s the rub. In the development and maintenance of election management software, there are nothing but public functions at stake. Why shouldn’t these technologies which will regulate the heart of the voting process be specially reserved for public development by public interests, such as the existing elections division at the SOS?

In the case of this voter database project in Texas, there is some consolation in the fact that the private function has a specific scope and time limit. After Team IBM puts the database system together, the state will operate it, and after four more years of service contracts with Hart InterCivic, the state will have the option to buy back the database system at “fair market value.” So this privatization project is not as grim as others you see around town today, such as the plan to permanently close HHS offices and replace them with contract vendors forever. But we’ll come back to the question later. Now for some facts.

As of April 1 (I don’t pick the dates, I just report them) Team IBM had reported ten thousand billable hours into the database project, or about 27 percent of the total hours that are scheduled. And the state has accepted from them 35 of the “deliverable” items or about 12 percent of the 291 items due by next February, the revised completion date of the project. In return for what the state has received, Team IBM has been paid $220,000 since November, 2004. (Although the report is dated April 1, the number of hours reported is carried over from the March 25 report, so the final April 1 hours will be higher. Stay tuned.)

“The poor start has been corrected,” writes the project manager, “and the project is running much more smoothly.” About that poor start, we’ll soon see what the documents have to say. Shall we start at the beginning?

Way back on Nov. 8, the Monday after the elections, Team IBM was welcomed to the “billable” part of the project. The first thing they asked for was a filing cabinet that locks. The first thing the state asked from Team IBM was a weekly report to be handed in every Tuesday covering the prior week.

Already by this point, Texas was leading other states in the development of its database. The project manager proudly showed off plans in College Station on Nov. 16 to a meeting of County Tax Assessors (who double as voter registrars), held a conference call to share his experience with Arizona, and on Nov. 19 convened the kickoff meeting for the TEAM system.

The trouble began during week three, when IBM delivered its first “deliverable.” Although the file was labeled “Detailed Requirements Specifications” state staff said it was not what they expected to see, and the state’s project manager called the file “incomplete.” And it is here that the knowledge of state staff enters into evidence versus the expertise of a privatized vendor. In exhibit number one, state staff simply had higher expectations than the private sector was delivering. And this is what privatization really feels like, time after time.

As November and December tugged at week four, Team IBM delivered its first deliverable that the state would accept: Deliverable D.1 aka Initial Project Workplan. Not a bad month’s work.

Also during week four, TEAM held its first group organizational meeting and invited a speaker. Cathy Cioffi is overseeing the overhaul of a statewide Crash Records Information System (CRIS). The project weighs in at $14.1 million involving two state agencies (DPS and TxDOT) and a private giant (Northrup Grumman).

A quick google on Cioffi yields an interesting article about Knowledge Management or KM in which Cioffi is quoted as saying, if you want $14 million for something, don’t call it KM: “We could not have gotten funding at the state level for something classified as a KM project,” says CRIS Project Manager Cathy Cioffi. “We had to show the business links–and where the value is–because we’re using taxpayer dollars.”

In an age of privatization Cioffi’s quote is nicely done. If you want to spend public money, focus on the business links. Well, she didn’t invent the times she’s living in, but she does express them very well.

But what if we take Cioffi’s hint that this is really Knowledge Management that we’re talking about? The article by Alice Dragoon at CIO Archives stresses that the way you do KM is incrementally, because folks who don’t know KM won’t support you otherwise. Consider another KM strategist: “He would start with a series of small, discrete KM initiatives that would quickly demonstrate value, then gradually build on those successes, creating a knowledge-enabled organization one layer at a time.”

It’s a great strategy no doubt this layering where one thing at a time you make your whole world datafied. It appeals to my inner geekness, my own database dreams of struggle. But it also whispers a cautionary hint. These data projects that we are funding all around us have a great potential to add up to something. Are we thinking ahead?

In our business oriented public life, no law gets considered for adoption without a fiscal note. This helps lawmakers avoid the mistake of passing a law that on its face has no budget but in consequence will really cost a lot of money. Cioffi’s hint about the politics of Knowledge Management suggests that something like a fiscal note might be considered for KM. If KM projects are going to be sold in our business-oriented world in terms of fiscal efficiency, then how are we going to flag the need for discussing their actual KM implications in public life?

Week five finds our subcontractor in election affairs Hart InterCivic down at the Department of Public Safety, figuring out how best to tap into everything your state troopers have to offer. And this is just the sort of occasion that calls for a growl. What could be more public in function than records kept by your friendly state troopers? At this point, the interface between two very public functions is being funneled into proprietary private software. In the voting system of the future, there will be a real-time interface between voting rolls and criminal records, between voter registration applications and drivers license records. In the meeting between Hart and DPS are we enabling the privatization of interfaces that have nothing but public uses? And what rights do we have to even ask Hart what they might be up to?

Meanwhile during week five our project manager meets with subcontractor GeoDecisions to get oriented on the possibilities of graphical mapping. The project includes mapping because voter information will be mapped to street addresses and street addresses will be mapped to voter precincts. In addition, census data will be overlaid onto precinct maps. Not only will voters have the ability to find out where they should vote, but political strategists will be able to call up reports that show which streets tend to vote in Democratic primaries, with names and addresses attached.

The mapping meeting also raises new issues about the brave new world of data interfacing. Imagine the day coming when Hart InterCivic will sell software that interfaces mapping with state trooper criminal records? Want arrest records by street? Maps of criminal histories?

When Texas hired their project manager, they went and got the guy who wrote a textbook on project management so watch out, he’s into the concept, very much. During week five he sorts through your three basic project categories: Deliverables (the things that can be finished and turned over at a specific point in time); Working Documents (that have to be kept updated and are therefore subject to change and never really finished); and Assumption Items (what you assume to be true about parameters, capabilities, partners, and other forms of reality). And when he’s finished going through all these things, he makes a note: “found 117 items to exchange categories.” I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing makes me go wow, this guy really knows how to KM! Makes you wanna peek at his desktop, too. Or when you move something from assumption to deliverable, what kind of move is that?

Note to self: during week six the project manager goes to Cooper Consulting’s “monthly project managers meeting” on December 14. Now what is Cooper Consulting up to exactly? Please don’t forget to ask. Meanwhile, Team IBM after six weeks work and two deliverables down (I don’t know what the second one is) has logged 2,386 billable hours.

Weeks seven and eight should be holiday weeks for sane people. But right at the beginning TEAM holds a Focus Group meeting for 20 representatives from 12 counties, then the project manager lines up his empty files to be filled later by all the signed docs. That sounds like a reasonable way to work during the holidays. Get your filing system set up for the New Year. I may be WASP, but there are days you have to relax a little.

Week nine is the first week of the New Year. The project manager touches base with the Legislative Budget Board about getting permission to do the computer development in Austin rather than West Texas where all state computer work is supposed to be done in facilities managed by Northrup Grumman.

Do you wonder just a little if IBM and Hart trust Grumman to keep all these proprietary secrets during the coming year? I want to label parts of this paragraph as abject speculation, but while spell checking Northrup Grumman against their website, they informed me that their next generation pilotless killer airplane just took off for a test. Now you put that thing together with a mappable DPS database of troublemakers and you’ll long for the good ol days of tasers I assure you.

On Jan. 7, the project manager reports three new deliverables, places a purchase order, and heads off to South Padre for a conference on election management. It’s good to be king.

series to be continued

Ten Thousand Hours of Privatization, Part Two
Weeks 10-13 of the Texas Voter Database Project

By Greg Moses

During weeks ten to thirteen (January 2005) of the Texas Voter Database Project we can see two significant transformations of the power matrix between the state and its private contractors. From one side, private contractors IBM and Hart InterCivic intensify their process of extracting from state employees their practical knowledge of election management, the better to privatize that knowledge into a commercial product.

From the other side, we see the state project manager imposing on Team IBM a meticulous process of plans and reports that discipline the private contractors into more transparent structures of information and accountability. The famous paperwork of state bureaucracy is force fed.

Also, in the process of writing up this report on the January activities, The Texas Civil Rights Review is beginning to feel the difference between reporting on state agencies and private companies.

For one thing, part of the reason that state agencies exist is to be involved in public accountability and criticism. We have logged a dozen hours this week viewing documents at the capitol. If the work resulting from docs supplied by the Secretary of State were to criticize the SOS, there might be consequences, but the game would be well known, and there would be no stock price to defend, no truly colossal sum of money at stake.

On the other hand, we notice that we do not spend any time at the headquarters of IBM or Hart InterCivic going through their documents. And if the results of our public research were to be perceived as critical of a global computer consulting firm, there might also be consequences, but the consequences would be of a different king (quite a nice typo I think). One effect of privatization therefore is to shift significant activities into realms where the games of public accountability and criticism meet new constraints, where also the consequences of debate are tossed into a context of stock prices and product sales. And when that happens, well, why do you think the business press is ever so cheery in comparison to the political press?

So if you are among the news consumers today who feel that even the political press has grown too cheery lately, perhaps that is just one more symptom of the shift we are all experiencing from a public to a privatized world order.

* * *

During the second week of January (week ten) the Colorado branch of Hart InterCivic invites a visit from two top-level administrators at the Elections Division of the SOS. It is difficult to imagine that Hart could do otherwise.

The makers of proprietary election equipment could hardly develop their wares with confidence if they did not know first what the public servants know about the practicalities of election management. The Colorado branch of Hart InterCivic first developed the eSlate voting system that we use in Travis County. Now they are developing a voter registration database, election management system, and jury wheel, all to be delivered to the state as a private product more technically known as COTS or Commercial Off-The-Shelf.

Although Hart is lead subcontractor for the project because of its ability to deliver an election management COTS, the product is not really ready for delivery yet. First, it has to be developed. As the visit to Colorado shows, the state is an active partner in helping Hart to develop the very same COTS that the state will license from Hart at a cost of $4 million, as soon as it is actually delivered.

In five years time the state will be able to buy back that COTS at “fair market value.” But first, as we say, the COTS must be developed and for this, forgive the repetition, public servants have to be invited to Colorado to meet with private contractors. And among those private contractors are private Subject Matter Experts who will later charge the state a hundred or two hundred bucks per hour to help solve any critical problems that might arise. Perhaps the reader is aware of famous economic principles of efficiency exemplified in this process. No doubt the principles are well known in business schools.

Also during week ten, Team IBM submits an invoice for $28,000 to cover its December work and a bill for $5,853 in travel and living expenses. A steering committee for the Secretary of State’s office (SOS) meets on Jan. 20.

During week eleven, billable hours are up to 4,230 and one more deliverable is delivered, but fifteen items “expected to be delivered” by Team IBM do not get delivered. We are beginning to understand why the state’s project manager would look back on this as a “poor start.”

Some of the early difficulties in getting started derive from the state’s failure to purchase equipment on schedule. The contract plan called for the state to purchase a million dollars in hardware and software (on top of the $12 million to contractors IBM and Hart InterCivic). But in a snafu officially known as Project Issue Number 001, it turns out the state couldn’t purchase computer equipment in such a straightforward way.

The problem with major computing tasks in Texas state government is that they are supposed to be consolidated into a San Angelo facility managed by Northrup Grumman. So the state project manager puts in a change order to move the project equipment to San Angelo as required by state law. It takes a couple of months to finally decide that the project will be kept in Austin as planned, but meanwhile Team IBM is having difficulty understanding the status of purchasing orders for hardware.

Back during week six the IBM project manager reported hearing from one person that the equipment had been ordered, while another person told her no, it had not. What she finds out during week seven is that the order cannot be placed for Austin equipment until the purchase is authorized by means of a special waiver from the Legislative Budget Board, since the hardware will not be placed in San Angelo.

Meanwhile, thanks to that meeting in Colorado, Team IBM reports that critical requirements have been collected for two crucial pieces of the election management puzzle: Election Night Reporting (ENR) and Ballot Definition (BD).

The Team IBM project manager is having troubles of her own keeping up with meticulous administrative details demanded by the state’s project manager. As she turns in a new, revised work plan that is “deliverable driven rather than task driven” she makes a formal complaint for the record. “Increased administrative tasks have caused deliverables and work papers to slide.” It is pleasing to see how she appropriates the new language of deliverables in order to articulate her complaint. She logs her complaint as Project Issue Number 002, assigns it a priority level ‘H’ for high, and places it on an Issues List to be either analyzed, brought up for decision, or resolved during future reporting periods. In fact, whether she knows it or not, her days as IBM project manager will soon end.

In the hardware/software area, a “development environment” has been set up where Team IBM can share project files with the state, but there is still no election system to test yet, because first of all the hardware hasn’t arrived, and second of all the VR (or voter registration software) is still in demo stage at Hart.

During week twelve, the Team IBM administrator uses a brand new status report format (version four) to say that she has helped to produce two new plan docs, two strategy docs, and “revised project work plan number 80.” And on Jan. 28, the project convenes a Focus Group of 32 people from 15 counties to share progress to date.

As January changes to February, ten more plans are delivered during week thirteen while intensive meetings continue in Colorado. As Team IBM also convenes meetings with the state IT staff to discuss ENR and BD ar
chitecture, Hart says that its Voter Registration build is 90 percent complete, awaiting crucial review by one state expert who happens to be not available at the moment. A third “project issue” is added: when will the scope of ENR and BD be defined?

And finally, in the state’s report for week thirteen, original completion dates are x-ed out and moved back. In week thirteen the project is officially behind schedule.

To be continued in series.

Live Connection with DPS Raises Question
As IBM Gets New Project Manager and State Frets Expectations

Ten Thousand Hours: Part Three
Weeks 14-21 of the Texas Voter Database Project

By Greg Moses

When Texas pays $4 million to license the eRegistry election management software from Hart InterCivic, will it be buying a product that the state has helped to develop? And when the voter management system is hooked up to live records from law enforcement, will the voters be running the state or will the state be running the voters? These questions we ask after going through facts found in project documents for the Texas voter database and election management project, weeks 14-21.

Weeks 14-21 continue to show evidence of intensive knowledge harvesting as developers of the proprietary eRegistry software place so many demands on the expertise of state employees that the employees register a complaint about their ability to keep up. And the contract assumption that Hart InterCivic actually has a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) product to offer the state comes under question when the first release of the software arrives without installation instructions or a users manual.

These weeks also see a change in managers for Team IBM as weekly reports begin to display more detailed summaries of contractor activities.

And the running issue of what it means to privatize functions of public technology finds another prime case study when Hart InterCivic representatives express concern that their March 3 demonstration of software to a focus group of county election officials may result in “disclosures”. The same focus group also raises concerns for the state project manager that “county expectations” also need managing. By the end of the period the state manager is asking for administrative help so that he can be more free to discuss the project more frequently with “external stakeholders”.

As much of the technical activity for this period revolves around live data connections between the Secretary of State (SOS) and Department of Public Safety (DPS), we can also raise questions about a trend in voter management toward live interfaces with law enforcement. Is voter management now a subset of law enforcement? As update information is freely swapped between SOS and DPS, we wonder. Are the voters running the state or is the state running the voters?

Let’s try this answer. The high tech frontier in election management is creating a voting population as a class of administrative privilege that will be more and more pre-screened and qualified to vote. Against this trend a clear “human rights” response is needed: “let all the people vote, period.”

* * *

The IBM weekly status report for Feb. 5-11 has interesting features. For one thing, it is mislabeled week thirteen (it should be week fourteen) which serves as consolation against small-minded perfectionists everywhere who utter dicta about how things really work in the big time.

But more importantly, the document sets a new standard for this $12 million project to build a privatized voter database and election management system for Texas. It serves as documentary evidence that something has changed at the project, and although it bears the name of the initial project manager for Team IBM, the report’s style, format, and presentation hint that the new manager is already doing the old manager’s paperwork.

In the week-fourteen report we glimpse for the first time the full range of activities being conducted by at least ten project components: security team, data migration team, data mart team, voter information programmer, DBA, lead architect, interface team, GIS team, test team, and application team.

The security team for example puts together a meeting between staff from the Secretary of State (SOS) and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) where they work out the difficulties of making secure database connections between the voter registration system and DPS. As the reader may recall from previous articles in this series, the security team for the project will then take the knowledge gained from this meeting between state workers and turn it into a privatized computer solution that can be sold back to the state with service contracts attached.

The same kind of knowledge harvesting is going on with the project DBA (database administrator) who is meeting with “state employees and the data mart team to discuss reporting requirements.” In a handy term for wordplay, the DBA is working up “demoralized” tables that can be used by eRegistry software, a proprietary product of Hart InterCivic. Once the DBA gets clear about the data warehouse design, eRegistry will be “reverse engineered.” According to the contract with the state, “reverse engineering” of eRegistry is something that only Hart is allowed to do.

And this raises an interesting question for intellectual property buffs. If eRegistry is reverse engineered during a public contract with Texas to whom do the rights to the reverse engineered product belong? Is this another case where public money, public expertise, and public functions are all contributing to privatized value of a product in the marketplace? I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s an interesting question to ask.

Knowledge harvesting among state workers has created such “multiple and parallel demands on SOS resources” that state workers say they can hardly keep up with everything that Hart needs them to do. Meanwhile, the state is letting Team IBM use its screen reader to run tests with.

Also busy down at DPS is the interface team figuring out how to make the connections for live checks of drivers license and social security numbers, so that numbers placed on voter registration applications can be checked against the DPS database. Again, fresh questions come up for public inquiry. What all is attached to these numbers down at the DPS? What events can be triggered by the “live checks” that come in, other than a simple yes or no from DPS to SOS that a number does or does not belong to a name?

In addition to “live checks” of numbers, the interface team is also working on getting “signature images” from DPS that can be matched to signatures on voter registration cards. Remember you sign your drivers license, and that signature image is stored on a DPS computer. For some reason which is probably not very permanent, the DPS declines to offer up its signature images — I mean YOUR signature images — to the SOS.

By week fifteen it’s official, there is a new manager on board for Team IBM.

The state project manager during week sixteen reports that he has begun working with the new project manager for Team IBM who “is getting his arms around the project.” We don’t yet know what the new IBM manager had to say for weeks sixteen and seventeen (those reports were not included) but by week eighteen, the project plan is in version 84, and the list of project issues for Team IBM has grown in three weeks time from eight to 23.

Two of the new project issues in week 18 revolve around a 25-member county focus group that meets in Austin on March 3 (week 17). SOS has assembled the focus group in an effort to sell more counties on the project. But Hart registers “disclosure concerns” about all these folks seeing its eRegistry prototype, and the state project manager worries about “Counties Expectation Management.” Belonging to the focus group places public election officials in the dicey position of previewing plans for election management (a very public issue) and proprietary software (a very private property) at one and the same time. What does Hart fear they will talk about? What does the state project manager fear they have come to expect from this project? If we put the two worries together, may we infer that all did not go well on March 3?

March 3 turns out to be an unlucky day for another reason. Someone
from Team IBM copies the entire project folder and then “inadvertently” places the duplicate back onto the public workspace. For the next two weeks, updates to the project will be split between the two folders creating “confusion, lost comment documents, and process flow breakdown.” When the glitch is discovered about March 18, the state project manager will have to spend time bringing the two files back together.

Week 19 is a crucial week for the project. It is the deadline for Hart InterCivic to deliver its first COTS software, the Commercial Off-The-Shelf product that the state will eventually pay $4 million to use. On the due date for release of Hart One, the state receives a letter from Hart with a URL and password. On March 17, Hart presents a “walkthrough” of the software. But documentation was yet to be found. On the face of things, what Hart delivered does not yet look like a COTS.

Hart follow-up items appear in the report for week 20. The eRegistry configuration guide is reviewed on March 21. And on March 28, notice is received from the escrow service that deposits Hart software (actually this is a week 21 event).

During week 21 the external interface team meets with IBM and SOS to talk about tech submit issues and directory structure. External interfaces for the project have grown from an initial 10 to 19 since the project started. Does this mean that the number of databases hooked up to the election system has nearly doubled in scope?

According to plans contained in IBM reports, it looks like the week of April 18 will be eventful. There is a County Focus Group scheduled for April 19 to review the first Hart release of mid-March. On April 20 the SOS staff will be tasked to define their business rules in ways that are pertinent to the logic of eRegistry. And on April 22 Jeff Osborn will be in town.