From: "Dan Jellinek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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]
