Workpackage 1 - Regulations and Specifications

WP1 is divided into three main tasks:

1. Strategic development.
2. Technology, Security and Privacy.
3. Identification of local issues.

The main objective of this WP is to provide a clear road map to deploy in Europe the E-Poll approach to e-voting. It will cover all aspects, ready to be used as a guideline for the Coun-tries within the Union interested in going ahead with the system. The work is organised on a national basis and the suggested model is to consider three main areas (which could be done through the creation of Committees or working groups for each country or in a manner which fits with current developments in the country).

1. The first main area is related to institutional national stakeholders (e.g. Italy: magistrates, lawyers, expert and opinion leaders in general; UK: political parties, expert groups, senior e-policy people), to define the strategic objectives and the pathway - potentially starting with the use of e-voting and E-Poll at less critical electoral events (such as schools, local referenda and youth forum elections), leading to the provision of a national law and nec-essary regulations to support the use of E-Poll. It is expected that each country will produce a document to introduce each round of na-tional rollouts, which will include: rollout's scope, objectives, technologies, governance and evaluation criteria.

2. The second main area will deal with technical propositions and issues like Security and Privacy. This consideration may involve commercial suppliers who have been invited to join discussions, to share their knowledge and to reach a common optimised approach that may be the base for future call for tenders in E-Poll and e-voting.

3. The third area will involve local Authorities, in order to address issues coming from the need to create confidence in citizens about E-Poll and e-voting, to plan for effective com-munication at three levels:

a) Information and guidance to citizens.
b) Training for public servants - including electoral administrators.
c) Awareness for local politicians.

Another task of this area is to identify local issues and to define the most viable logistic pathway to support local deployment of E-Poll and e-voting infrastructure. All major stakeholders should be invited to contribute in order to cover a wide range of inputs. Any local group considering this area could be organised following the country's national structures; so, where municipalities are playing the main role, they would be the stakeholders involved, as well as where the e-voting competence is to local authorities at different levels (counties, regions, etc.), such authorities would be members of the group. It has to be stated that, even if the principal line of action of the e-Poll project concerns se-cured Intranet voting solutions via voting kiosks, the project will also address secured Internet voting. In order to allow e-Poll labelled solutions to be implemented either in an Intranet vot-ing environment or an Internet voting environment, the national technological specifications and regulations defined within the E-Poll project could cover both fields of application.

Workpackage 2 - Infrastructure

WP2 runs from the beginning only in Italy, where the commercial supplier team is already es-tablished. It could provide a working methodology for commercial suppliers when they will be involved in other countries during the project life, following the specific rules in each country. In the beginning WP2 focuses its activities in building the infrastructure needed to support E-Poll and e-voting during its rollout phases, comprising of voting kiosks consolidation, net-works, all security aspects and privacy issues. In Italy, this phase sees the external participation of some suppliers not directly involved in the E-Poll Consortium. In France the Ministry of Interior will give support to local authorities interested in launching rollout activities, starting from the completion of first specification documents. In the UK, the Department for Constitutional Affairs co-ordinates the procurement of e-voting services and infrastructure.

Workpackage 3 - Rollouts Set-up

WP3 includes all the activities related to the rollouts set-up at local/central level, in terms of organization and technology tuning. Its main focuses are around:

Workpackage 4 - Rollouts

WP4 identifies, country by country, a pathway for rollout activities. A challenging goal is to run extensive e-voting rollouts by 2009, in three large areas involving a large number of citi-zens (from 3.5 to 7 millions), in the use of e-voting including where appropriate, the E-Poll approach. In Italy an initial pathway has already been identified with the proposal to run real elections following the national rules, initially for the election of schools' Councils at regional level. Then, in subsequent rollouts, the project will move forward to local elections, with the aim to complete the project with a law in place able to allow a national event.

Workpackage 5 - Assessment and Dissemination

This workpackage deals with definition of criteria to evaluate results which have been defined in WP1. The present WP schedule foresees continuing its activity after each rollout, to collect and evaluate feedback coming from any of the stakeholders involved in the E-Poll deployment. It will also link in with any independent evaluation which may be conducted according to na-tional rules. Outcome of this phase will be assessed at national level and compared with other Countries results, in order to reach a consolidated assessment, able to return a clear picture of the E-Poll deployment while giving the opportunity to go deeper in specification inside WP1. Dissemination activities and all possible enlargement promotions are proposed to be under-taken during at least one dedicated workshop for each rollout session. Furthermore, with the Commission's help, two pan-European workshop will be organized in Brussels, to discuss e-voting opportunities and to assess a common specification/reference document to be the base for further electronic vote enlarging in Europe.

Workpackage 6 - Rollout to further deployment

Starting from the cost calculation foreseen before each rollout session, comprising the experi-ences already acquired in the past Market Validation, WP6 processes, integrates and evaluates the relevant parameters needed to qualify the viability. In every involved Country, according to the degree of initial deployment performed, a finan-cial costing will be finalised. The main outcome of this WP is the definition of a final deployment scenario of the E-Poll service at a local and European level, taking into consideration different life-cycles of the ser-vices implemented in each rollout Country. WP6 will provide hypothesis upon cost reduction (of course, considering differences in qual-ity and quantity of country based platforms used in different rollouts), together with an over-view of the impact of the obsolescence of kiosks, hardware components, networks and soft-ware in general. The final relevant outcome of the WP is the provision of a financial projection that accompa-nies the deployment of e-vote services across and between international, national and regional boundaries.

Workpackage 7 - Project Management

Project Management ensures a proper co-ordination across tasks and partners, in order to achieve the overall project objectives within time and budget constraints. The work carried out in this WP will address an effective project management at all stages, providing regular progress report to the European Commission, to supervise the technical pro-gress of the project and to establish and maintain effective communication between project partners, workpackages' leaders and other project participants.