Last updated on December 17, 2013

The UK Electoral Commission conducted comprehensive assessments of all of the voting pilots that it conducted between 2002 and 2007. After the 2007 pilots, it identified several project management issues that had not been properly addressed:

“It is important to realise that these remote e-voting pilots are complex IT projects and therefore require effective planning, testing and quality management. The lack of these elements in the 2007 pilots resulted in significantly higher implementation risks than necessary. The relative success of the delivery of the pilots, notwithstanding some issues at individual pilots, was due to the efforts of individual local authorities and their suppliers, combined with good luck.”

The report also went on to emphasize the need to allow adequate time for testing prior to polling so that identified issues can be properly resolved and retesting can take place.