Election group considers alternatives to Datamail

Electionz.com, which processed results in last year's drawn-out local body elections, says it is keeping its software partner options open for future elections.

That follows the presentation of a consultant's report to the justice and electoral parliamentary select committee into reasons for delays in releasing final results in the 2004 elections.

The report, by consultancy KPMG, highlighted problems with software developed by Datamail, a New Zealand Post subsidiary. Datamail was contracted by Electionz.com to write the software.

Christchurch-based Electionz.com chief executive Steve Kilpatrick said Datamail "will learn a lot from the report", which drew attention to project management and problem resolution deficiencies.

Seven territorial local authorities and 18 district health boards conducted their elections using the single transferable vote method instead of the more common first past the post.

According to KPMG, which was commissioned by the board of New Zealand Post to investigate what went wrong, STV results were more complicated to arrive at.

"Contention" problems with Datamail's software, for which New Zealand Post last month took responsibility, and apologised to the select committee, meant final results took weeks to be delivered.

A contention problem is defined as being "an interruption to processing which was not detected either through normal error handling routines or other process controls".

Electionz.com will be seeking assurances that Datamail's software functions properly before working with the company again, Kilpatrick says.

"Clearly, at the end of the day we need to be certain the software does what it is supposed to do," Kilpatrick said.

He expects to meet the company soon to hear what steps it is taking.

"There are other options out there," Kilpatrick said.