Saber Provides Smooth Election Results for 13 Election Management Clients
With the landmark election of 2008, no news was good news for EDS, now HP.
The electoral process went off smoothly for EDS' 13 election management clients. Voter Registration and Election Management Solutions, comprising enterprise-class voter registration and election management software solutions, provided voter list management and election management functionality for about 20 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 40 million voters.
“Nationwide, one in five voters registered to vote in their state using our software,” said Tom Ferguson, HP's elections practice leader and a veteran Connecticut state elections official.
EDS' Elections Practice, which includes election management, centralized voter registration, and the duplicate voter exchange, was developed to assist states in implementing the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). For this election, Electus™ was used in eight states. EDS supported the remaining states with its ElectioNet system and custom applications.
In all, EDS provides end-to-end election management services that automate every aspect of election office operations that reduce risk and costs, maximize productivity, increase efficiency and standardize election workflow.
“The use of our applications in the states where we have a presence resulted in reduced voter fraud, contributed to more reliable poll books and produced cleaner, error-free data,” said Randy Cobena of EDS' Elections Practice.
Extensive Preparation and Service
The EDS teams throughout the United States worked for months in advance to make sure the national election didn't experience any hiccups.
“Due to weeks of excellent preparation,” Cobena said, “the elections were a great success as everything ran smoothly, with no major issues.”
More than 130 employees at EDS’ Salem Development Center in Oregon handle the delivery of the Electus solution. The center provides a first-level response call center, help desk services, data migration, infrastructure, documentation and training, and software delivery.
“In addition to Salem center, each state had a project manager that coordinated all the timing, focus and outcomes of the work effort,” Cobena said. “The project managers worked closely with their counterparts on the client side – with secretaries of state, county elections offices, and other elections staff - to ensure full readiness and optimum performance across the platform.
More importantly, he said, “Building and maintaining relationships were key. Our ‘white-glove service’ was an underpinning to our success.”
“We were proactive, reaching out to clients months before election day to ensure they received the proper technical and/or functional support,” Ferguson said.
In addition, the solid partnership of EDS and each client helped achieve the smooth outcome. For example, the State of Colorado is a new client. EDS employees traveled across all 64 counties for weeks in advance to make sure elections officials knew how to use the Electus system and that the transition from their legacy systems was effective and successful.
“From the beginning, we developed teamwork where we were truly a blended team; you could not distinguish us and the client,” Ferguson said. “The result was a high level of service.”
The EDS team was on 24x7 standby for 45 days before and on election night. The help desk also operated on extended hours. However, all the preparation worked so well that employees were able leave earlier than they had anticipated Nov. 4.
Steve Way of EDS, who supports the Maryland State Board of Elections (SBE), said employees at the Voter Registration division had planned to be in the office until midnight.
“Aside from the polling staff, all other Voter Registration staff left by 9 p.m.,” he said. “The entire SBE management team was … simply amazed as to how smoothly it all went as they went home early as well. I believe that our planning and organization of the voting systems can be attributed to a lot of the success.”
Customer Praise
The fruits of that effort paid off as state officials praised the outcome.
Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman said: “We want to express our gratitude to the team which successfully completed the 2008 General Election with the new Statewide Colorado Registration and Election System (SCORE). SCORE was successfully implemented in Colorado in the midst of the election cycle.”
“We look forward to a continued productive partnership and share our success with the talented and capable team, as they deserve our gratitude for their stand-up performance,” he continued.
“We can, indeed, all be proud that our Elections teams worked very hard, made many sacrifices, and in the end, allowed out clients to complete a very important and successful election event,” said Frank Chechile, EDS Vice President of State and Local Government. “In our business, there are no higher accolades and no better form of feedback than those expressed by our clients.”