Home Affairs Department: The Rural Election Management Information System

Project Description

Home Affairs Department (hereinafter refer to as “HAD”) planned to develop the REMIS to capture information of voters, candidates and subscribers for the Village Representative Elections (VRE) to facilitate verification of their qualifications as voters, candidates and subscribers that would enable effective and efficient monitoring of progress of the VRE exercises, early identification of problems and any subsequent review of policies and practices by the management. The data in the manual voters' registration and candidates' nomination forms was the primary source of data for the establishment of the REMIS

The assignment was to carry out the System Analysis & Design (SA&D), System Development and Implementation for the REMIS for HAD of HKSARG to meet the functions of the VRE exercises. There are different stages to execute the REMIS functions:

(A) Voter Registration

  1. To import voters' data processed by an outsourced contractor into the REMIS for storage and internal checking
  2. To export voters' data for matching with Immigration Department' s records
  3. To print reports
    a. Transaction report
    b. Exceptional report
     
    i. Incomplete/ incorrect information of electors
    ii. Electors registered in more than one Existing Village or Indigenous Village
    c. Control reports
    d. Reports on age and sex profile by Districts/Rural Committees/Villages
    e. Progress/statistical reports on voter registration (e.g. no. of electors registered on each day and the cumulative totals)
  4. To print related letters (e.g. enquiry letters and rejection letters) and mailing labels
  5. To print separate provisional registers of electors for Indigenous Inhabitant Representatives (IIR) and Resident Representative (RR)
  6. To print separate final registers of electors for IIR and RR
  7. To print the electoral registers by Districts/Rural Committees/Villages
  8. To produce softcopy of the personal data of the electors on CD for reference by District Offices
  9. To provide cross-references of the two electoral registers for IIRs and RRs

After the first round of the VRE, omissions/deletions lists and related control reports should also be produced in subsequent years.
*Registration forms can be downloaded from VRE website and receipt of the completed forms through electronic means with digital certificate will be accepted.

(B) Nomination

Subscribers

  1. To verify that they are registered electors of the Village concerned
  2. To verify that the no. of nomination forms subscribed by the elector do not exceed the no. of seats for the Village
  3. To print control reports

Candidates

  1. To verify that they are a registered elector
  2. To verify that the candidate is not nominated for election as IIR or RR for more than one Village
  3. To match with Immigration Department' s records to confirm his age and permanent resident status
  4. To print (a) Progress/Statistical report on nomination; (b) Reports on candidates' profile; (c) Lists of validly nominated candidates by Districts/Rural Committees/Villages; (d) Reports on withdrawal/disqualification of validly nominated candidates and related notices

(C) Before Polling

  1. To print postal/residential addresses of electors and related polling details on poll letters
  2. To print list of polling stations by Districts/Rural Committees
  3. To print electoral registers (with identity document numbers of electors) for each polling stations
  4. To print electoral registers (with names of electors arranged in alphabetical order) for each polling stations for counter checking.

The major challenge of this project was:

The major challenge was the uncertainty along the development stage because the VRE Ordinance was passed by Legco in mid-Feb 2003 while the System had to be in use in early Mar 2003. In view of the ever changing and additional requirements due to the amendments from Legislative Council (Legco) and user, Arcotect had assigned the Deputy Programme Manager to work with the Project Team and HAD users from the very beginning, to handle impact analysis and changes of the program within very short notice.

The data volume for Load Test was expected to be 350,000 voters with 30 data fields on an application page for input and verification with the Immigration Department and internal check. Arcotect has successfully tuned the system to meet the acceptance criteria of HAD. Data import and export with outsourced data- input contractor, the Immigration Department, the Hongkong Post, the Hong Kong Police Force and the Information Technology Services Department and cross platform data exchange was also handled by the REMIS.

The following are the major competitive advantages we did for the REMIS:

  1. Due to the very tight schedule for implementation, Arcotect had adopted the prototype approach in very early stage of the system design. Users' commitment and participation in working together with the project team in fine-tuning the prototypes have been instrumental to the success of the delivery of the system.
  2. User friendly Graphical User Interface (buttons/icons & navigation bar as conventional Windows interface)
  3. Complicated data verification logic for age, resident status, criminal record, double-datainput, invalid data, different rounds of checking, etc.
  4. Dynamic report generation at any time with most updated data
  5. Multi-dimension advance search engine for handy retrieval
  6. Data export to external parties/ systems
  7. Less human intervention, more auto verification to reduce the error produced in manual processing of data
  8. Flexibility to integrate On- line Forms
  9. Familiar with Government Standards & Methodologies
  10. Top Executives' support on flexibility of change request from users

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