Qld election farce: Disgraced boss, a failing system and our IT experts locked down in Wuhan
The Palaszczuk Government has come clean about the âdifficult few yearsâ behind the failure of the election reporting system on March 28.
The council elections and two state by-elections were already controversial due to the Governmentâs insistence that Queenslanders still vote despite an unfolding health crisis after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.
Now it has emerged that the count reporting problems on election night were partly the result of a new computer system not being tested as planned because âcoding resourcesâ were locked down in Wuhan.
In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, the Department of Housing and Public Works, which supported the Electoral Commission in its computer upgrade, conceded there had been a âdifficult few yearsâ â starting with former commissioner Walter Van der Merweâs decision to acquire the Konnech system.
According to the department, and Queensland Chief Customer and Digital Officer Chris Fechner, the commission âmassively underestimating the scope of the product changes during the procurement exerciseâ and the âsignificant skills and capacity upliftâ needed to deliver it.
Van der Merwe was the subject of an internal investigation that found he had failed to do his job, was drunk in the workplace, absent without reasonable excuse, and seen in a compromising position âof a sexual natureâ with an employee. He was also fined after steroids were found in the office.
âWhen (Van der Merwe) stepped down in February 2018, the project had a considerable number of open âhighâ and âextremeâ risks that were inadequately mitigated,â Fechner told the committee.
âAt this time the project was significantly challenged and lacked adequate governance capability to recover the project.â
The department, commission and other stakeholders sought to make good out of a bad situation, working to a timeframe that ran into a pandemic â and an unexpected coincidence.
âThe delivery of the project was further impacted in the final development and bug fixing stages during January and February 2020, as most of the coding resources were based in Wuhan China and were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 lock-down,â Fechner said.
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Final testing the week before the election revealed âunacceptable issues in security and load capacityâ within the system, which had previously prompted concerns it could be vulnerable to hacking. The commission decided to resort to a contingency website, however on election night âthe overall process of posting results to the website was delayed by data quality issues related to the collection and manual data entry by Returning Officersâ.
The count data was accurate, according to Fechner, but âmis-keying and miscellaneous character inputâ prevented the results being promptly displayed on the commission website and media feeds. This left candidates, journalists and the general public unable to monitor the results by conventional means.
ABC election analyst Antony Green, who had worked with the commission in the lead-up to the election, feared the debacle might undermine confidence in the electoral system ahead of the state election.
Green told the committee its inquiry âshould not become an excuse for punishment, but rather an opportunity to ensure the failure in delivering results is not repeated at the state election in Octoberâ.
Fechner expressed confidence the system would be ready. The Government and commission have yet to announce any changes to the election process.
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