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CyberVote, an innovative
cyber voting system for internet terminals and mobile phones, is a
research and development (RDT) programme being funded by the European
Commission, with additional funding from the companies and organisations
undertaking the work. It is part of the Information Society Technologies
(IST) 1999 programme for research, technology development and
demonstration under the fifth framework programme (5th PCRD). It is
attached to Key
Action 1 "Systems and Services for the Citizens".
The objective of CyberVote
is to demonstrate a highly secure cyber-voting prototype using mobile and
fixed internet technologies. The project will define and implement a
CyberVote prototype embedding an innovative voting protocol relying upon
the use of advanced cryptographic tools that will be developed to ensure
integrity, privacy and authentication of the voters. The prototype will be
demonstrated and evaluated on 3 trial applications.
The project is carried out
by a consortium led by EADS Matra Systèmes
& Information (FR) and grouping together: British Telecommunications (UK), NOKIA Research Centre (FI), K.U.Leuven Research & Development
(BE), Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (NL), Freie Hansestadt Bremen
(DE), Mairie d'Issy-les-Moulineaux (FR) and Kista Stadsdelsnämnd (SE).
The project officially
started on 1 September 2000. It will end on 1 March 2003. The overall
budget of the project is € 3 243 629 and the total effort is 27.4
man-years. The overall planning is presented below.
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In order to achieve the
objectives of the project, the workplan is organised in the following main
work packages:
-
WP1 Management: this work package
will cover all usual management activities (reporting to the
Commission, quality audits, etc.) as well as the setting of
appropriate tools for enabling efficient communication between the
consortium.
-
WP2 Requirement Analysis: this
work package will consist in reviewing current and past electronic
democracy projects, analysing the legal issues of using an Internet
voting system and analysing user (voters and authorities
representatives) requirements. From a technical point view, a review
and a selection of candidate authentication and security techniques
will be carried out as well as a review of candidate Internet
technologies, hardware platforms, mobile phones and Internet terminals. Mock-ups of the CyberVote architecture will be evaluated at
this stage in order define the overall system architecture. The end of
this work package will mark a major project milestone (MS1), the
definition of the overall system architecture.
-
WP3 System Architecture specification
and design: this work package will consist in defining the
ergonomics plan that will be followed along the project in order to
ensure the acceptability of the system by the user and in specifying
the voting and communication protocols to be used between the clients
(PCs and mobile phones) and the servers (local and global servers). A
test plan will be elaborated at this stage to be used in the
validation phase. Finally, a trial simulation will be conducted with
prototype version 0 in order to get an early feedback from the user
and make the necessary changes if needed. The end of this work package
will mark another major project milestone (MS2), CyberVote prototype
version 0.
-
WP4 Implementation,
integration,
validation and security: this work package will consist in the
implementation of the e-voting protocol, the coding of the software
modules (voting protocols, authentication module, servers, clients)
that will be run on PC and mobile phone clients, the coding of the
local and global servers (vote counting, result compilation, etc.) as
well as the integration, validation and security testing of all these
components in the overall system. The end of this work package will
mark a major project milestone (MS3), the completion of the CyberVote
prototype version 1.0.
-
WP5 Trial applications: this work
package will consist in the trial applications of CyberVote. Once the
scope of these applications is refined, elections will be prepared on
the pilot voting sites. CyberVote will be configured in order to
conduct the trial applications in real situations. Security attacks
will be launched in order to assess the robustness. An evaluation
report will conclude this phase. An evaluation will be carried out to
conclude this phase, showing the techno-economic and social adequacy
of the CyberVote system. The end of this work package will mark a
major project milestone (MS4), the demonstrations of the trial
applications.
-
WP6 Assessment and evaluation:
this work package will consist in assessing the partial and the final
results of the project and evaluate if the progress made are in line
with the contractual objectives of the project. It will ensure that
the contractual objectives of the project will be reached. Appropriate
measures will be taken if the reports of this WP shows any discrepancy
from the original objectives. The end of this work package will mark
the last project milestone (MS5), the final report.
-
WP7 Exploitation and dissemination:
this work package will cover all activities needed to disseminate
(publications, events organisation, etc.) and exploit the results of
the project (exploitation plan, technological implementation plan,
etc.).
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The overall planning of the
project is as follows:
(click on the image to
make it larger)
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