Overview

The New South Wales Electoral Commission (NSWEC) engaged the Dialog Group to deliver two overlapping but independent projects as part of its digital transformation program ahead of the NSW State General Election in March 2019. 

The first was to implement an online candidate nominations system that, for the first time, allowed candidates to undertake the nomination process online thereby avoiding the need for paper-based workflows. The second project modernised the digital experience for NSW voters by developing a new on-line presence that merged multiple election websites into a single platform. Both projects had aggressive and immovable deadlines leading up the March 2019 elections.

The Problem

After the 2015 NSW State General Election, NSWEC identified the need to enhance the existing paper-based process of nominating eligible candidates to stand in general elections. The current process was inefficient, labour intensive, time consuming and prone to errors. A new system was required to facilitate the submission and validation of nomination forms, payments and other related information for candidates and registered political parties.

The Solution

Dialog delivered the solutions using the Kentico content management system together with bespoke Microsoft .NET components, all deployed within Microsoft Azure cloud services. The solution is designed to be highly scalable so as to handle extremely high-traffic events, has geo-redundant disaster recovery capabilities and is highly secure. It has many integrations into other commission systems as well as to payment, email and SMS services.

The solutions underwent extensive functional, integration, performance and security testing before going live.

Outcome

The Dialog and Electoral Commission teams worked very closely together to deliver the online nominations system and new website on time and within budget. The nominations system went live in February 2019 and performed flawlessly to process approximately 600 online nominations. This represented two thirds of all nominations and included 18 registered political parties and 90 independent candidates.

As result, the Commission has reduced processing times, reduced the need for temporary staff, reduced capture errors and greatly improved the experience for candidates and Commission staff.

The new website (https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au) went live in December 2018 and has been very well received by the public and Commission staff.

Dialog is now extending the nominations system and the website to cater for upcoming NSW Local Government elections.