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Information Quality in the Irish Electoral System – Some Analysis & Learnings On 19 June 2007, Daragh O Brien of the IQ Network delivered a highly topical seminar that looked into the issue of information quality in the Irish electoral system. With the General Election just behind us, Daragh’s presentation reviewed the major efforts undertaken earlier this year to clean up inaccuracies in the electoral register. The €12m project was classed by the then Minister for the Environment as a success. However, well documented cases following the election suggested that serious deficiencies remained.
Among the many problems identified were voters being sent to the wrong polling station, voting cards being issued with invalid voter ID numbers, and voters taken of register in error. It is clear that there were many problems, with many causes. Daragh found that a combination of factors led to a resource-sapping "scrap and rework" project that was not particularly accurate. Among the problem areas highlighted were inconsistencies in the process used, manual transcript problems, lack of standardisation in name and address formats, and electoral registration forms that contained fields that were open to some misinterpretation. Daragh highlighted that cleaning up the Irish electoral register is not an IT problem, but rather a change management problem. Another "scrap and rework" iteration is now required to bring the data back to a level of quality. The appointment of an Electoral Commissioner might help matters, but the sum of all individual parts in the process is the key. The first step in ensuring information quality of the Irish electoral register should be a thorough assessment of the number of people who claim to have been disenfranchised at polling stations on 24 May 2007. There is an urgent need to identify definitive issues so that we can begin to address the risk of electoral fraud and voter dissatisfaction that an inaccurate electoral register presents. |
