Virtual Election Booth

The electronic voting system provides various advantages for voting and saves significant resources in the process of voting, collecting and counting of ballots. This implementation will provide a secure way for people to vote online, which also eliminates the hassle of physically being present at designated election locations. However, for all the above savings electronic voting systems must provide security in each stage of the process to avoid any compromise of the authenticity of the results. This project aims to provide one such secure framework by implementing a secure online election voting protocol which has the ability to maintain privacy. Also a goal was to use this platform for finding the statistics of who voted and who did not vote. In Short, this is secure, cost saving and easy to use one step online voting system. The project aims to improve features of the current voting system which are currently lacking. The phone or a personal workstation is a better and more convenient option for a user to vote with. Ways to improve the voting system interface should, therefore, be designed and developed in order to make voting more convenient in a secured way

Public perceptions and user experience study on the use and adoption of a mobile internet e-Voting smartphone app within the Australian context

The Doctor of Philosophy (Innovation) (PhD.I) is a project-based higher research degree in which professional and industrial expertise combine with academic theory in the identification and creation of innovation. This innovation portfolio project is the culmination of a five-year journey on the first Australian university study on public perceptions and user experiences of using mobile internet e- Voting in the Australian context. This innovation portfolio project has produced baseline data on the perceptions of the Australian public, a prototype mobile voting smartphone app (the innovation), which allows for secure registration, casting a vote in a federal election and submitting a response to a national survey, and a user experience study on the app and A/B tests of various features. Trust is a core foundation of user adoption and, as such, is the underlying theme of the portfolio. Guided by the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), data collected from an anonymous survey on perceptions of the Australian public towards using a mobile internet e-Voting platform (N = 295) are presented and analysed. Of the respondents, 72.88% either Completely Trusted or Slightly Trusted government and commercial systems as opposed to 15.93% who either Completely Distrusted or Slightly Distrusted government and commercial systems. The survey also found that 75.25% of respondents were in favour of using mobile internet e-Voting, with 15.93% of respondents requiring greater information about the technology and 8.82% being against its utilisation. The top appeals of the platform were its mobility (91.40%), verifiability (72.90%) and Innovation Portfolio Project speed (72.50%), with the top concerns being manipulation (75.10%), retrieval (65.30%) and monitoring (63.20%) of cast votes by malicious parties or software. This portfolio also provides a chronologically documented development journey of the “mobile voting app” project. Utilising the Scrum methodology, this portfolio documents the beginning of the development project (envisioning session), the product backlog construction, sprint cycles, retrospectives and features details. Next, the mobile voting app is user tested by way of qualitative in-depth interviews to gather perceptions of five participants from a young and tech savvy cohort who are likely to be early adopters (Rogers, 2010). This user experience study found that participants were pleased with the usefulness and simplicity of the app. Most participants stated that they would use the mobile voting app if it were made available in the next election. These findings correlate with the constructs of the TAM (Davis, 1989), which state that perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) directly influence a user's attitude towards new technology (A). Those who would not use the app in the next election were either those who had not voted in an Australian election previously and stated they would like to vote using paper ballots first then would use it in the following election or were those who has reservations about the technology and its usefulness, primarily around government support. These findings correlate with the unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology model (UTAUT) by Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003), which states that the degree to which an individual believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system (facilitating conditions), directly influences the use behaviour and the moderating variable of experience. This portfolio concludes with a personal reflection on the findings and process of the works undertaken, the anticipations for this research and potential pathways for further development and application. Commentary is also provided on public events that occurred during the time of the research that widely impacted on public perceptions of the technology, including the 2016 census debacle, the 2015 NSW iVote hacking report and the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections

Closing the feedback loop for clicker questions

We describe the output from a recently-funded JISC Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant: Electronic Voting Analysis and Feedback for all (EVAF4All). We have created a web-based software tool (EVAF) that allows electronic voting system data captured at the point of delivery in lectures, to be fed back to students, thus providing valuable formative feedback of their progress over what can be a large number of such questions. In institutions where 'loanership' models of handset distribution are used (typically, when students keep the same handset for a whole course or year) this is particularly powerful as it can supply students with their own data as well as the aggregate data from the rest of the cohort. Academic staff can use the tool to evaluate the effectiveness of their clicker questions as an aide to course monitoring or development processes. We briefly cover the technical aspects of the system we have built and also present a case study of its use in an introductory Physics course taught at the University of Edinburgh

Design and implementation of a web interface for Axis global testing Live Sites

Designing and developing a software product is a difficult process. The product must be usable and solve the correct problem. At the same time, the underlying code must be well written. Many projects fail to deliver or exceed their budget. This thesis explores a practical approach to software design and development that tries to adhere to both user centered design and agile development. The process follows Google Ventures’ design sprint model and also takes inspiration from Jacob Nielsen's discount usability methods. This approach is applied to a real project at Axis Communications. The goal of the project was to design and implement a web application for monitoring and analyzing data from Axis global weather testing ``Live Sites''. The data was collected and analyzed manually which was a very time consuming process. It was difficult to interact with the data in order to see correlations between the weather and the camera images. We were able design a solution to this and implement it during four iterations. Each iteration consisted of a design sprint, an implementation sprint and an evaluation phase. The design sprints were fast and effective, which meant we could spend more time on building the actual product while still being confident that we were building something that would actually work. Through continuous usability evaluation and regular stakeholder meetings we were able to validate our design. The project resulted in a web application consisting of a number of interactive dashboards. Our conclusion is that the resulting interface solves the problem of interacting with the ``Live Site'' data and should provide a good foundation to build upon. We also conclude that Google Ventures' design sprint is a powerful and effective model which could be of great benefit to software development projects.Is it possible to create usable software quickly and effectively? To find out, we combined practices of good usability design and fast software development in a project at Axis Communications. Developing usable software is no simple task. The software must be well designed and solve a real problem for its users. At the same time the software’s inner workings must be engineered in a good way. Preferably, the process of producing this software should be fast and cost effective. Many software projects fail, either by delivering an unusable product or by going over budget. In our master thesis we explored a practical approach to software design and coding that tries to solve these issues. We applied this approach to a software project at Axis Communications. Our task was to develop a website for Axis global testing live sites. These live sites are physical sites located around the world in different climate zones. Each site consists of a number of Axis cameras and a weather station connected to a local server. The cameras are left there so that the physical impact of the environment can be monitored and studied. By doing this Axis makes sure that their cameras are able to handle harsh weather conditions in the real world, not just in controlled test chambers. Our approach was to divide the project into four repetitions, each consisting of a design phase, a coding phase, and a usability evaluation phase. During the design phase, which lasted for five days, we tried to solve design issues. We conducted interviews with the users and had observations sessions on day one. Solutions to the discovered problems were explored in day two. On day three we combined our ideas into a single solution. During day four we made a prototype of this solution. The usability of this prototype was tested on real users at Axis on the fifth and final day. The coding phase lasted two to three weeks and took us from a design prototype to a working website. The usability of the website was evaluated and we brought the newly discovered problems with us to the next repetition. Throughout our project we used this approach to solve design problems at an astonishing pace. By incorporating the design phase into a repetitive process we were able to produce a working product very quickly, which we could continuously add and improve upon. The process resulted in a usable product, but we were sadly not able to fully implement our envisioned solution. We do however believe that by following our process model we were able to not only produce good design, but also well written code. Hopefully this means that the product can be built upon and eventually fully realized. The process model turned out to be a powerful and effective tool. Despite the fact that we couldn’t completely evade the problem of going over budget, we think it could be of great benefit to the software engineering process

The Software Vulnerability Ecosystem: Software Development In The Context Of Adversarial Behavior

Software vulnerabilities are the root cause of many computer system security fail- ures. This dissertation addresses software vulnerabilities in the context of a software lifecycle, with a particular focus on three stages: (1) improving software quality dur- ing development; (2) pre- release bug discovery and repair; and (3) revising software as vulnerabilities are found. The question I pose regarding software quality during development is whether long-standing software engineering principles and practices such as code reuse help or hurt with respect to vulnerabilities. Using a novel data-driven analysis of large databases of vulnerabilities, I show the surprising result that software quality and software security are distinct. Most notably, the analysis uncovered a counterintu- itive phenomenon, namely that newly introduced software enjoys a period with no vulnerability discoveries, and further that this “Honeymoon Effect” (a term I coined) is well-explained by the unfamiliarity of the code to malicious actors. An important consequence for code reuse, intended to raise software quality, is that protections inherent in delays in vulnerability discovery from new code are reduced. The second question I pose is the predictive power of this effect. My experimental design exploited a large-scale open source software system, Mozilla Firefox, in which two development methodologies are pursued in parallel, making that the sole variable in outcomes. Comparing the methodologies using a novel synthesis of data from vulnerability databases, These results suggest that the rapid-release cycles used in agile software development (in which new software is introduced frequently) have a vulnerability discovery rate equivalent to conventional development. Finally, I pose the question of the relationship between the intrinsic security of software, stemming from design and development, and the ecosystem into which the software is embedded and in which it operates. I use the early development lifecycle to examine this question, and again use vulnerability data as the means of answering it. Defect discovery rates should decrease in a purely intrinsic model, with software maturity making vulnerabilities increasingly rare. The data, which show that vulnerability rates increase after a delay, contradict this. Software security therefore must be modeled including extrinsic factors, thus comprising an ecosystem

Developing a Secure and Trusted E-Voting System for Libyan Elections

Purpose: The aim of this study is to identify the issues and problems in the current Libyan voting system, and to develop a secure e-voting prototype system associated with the Libyan electoral system and the laws and legislation governing.   Theoretical framework: E-voting systems allow greater participation of eligible voters to cast their vote remotely or any location that the voter could be during election.   Design/methodology/approach: This study used mixed methodology. A qualitative method via interview would be used to collect qualitative data from citizens and election staff to determine functionalities and features of the proposed system. Using Semi-structured interviews with ten eligible voters, election officials. While a quantitative study conducted to evaluate users and elections of officials to determine how the systems fulfils the requirements and their expectations, to determine if the prototype proposed system offers practical solution to the Libyan voters and if the functionalities of the system fulfil the requirement gathered at the problem definition stage. The second prototype was regarded as meeting the key functional and non-functional requirement and ease of use criteria by users. After fixing the concerns found during the first prototype's evaluation in terms of the requirement criteria. The criterion for ease of use were met.   Findings: As a result, 87% of the evaluators indicated that they would adopt the system if it was introduced. Whereas 87% of the evaluators suggested that they would recommend the E-Voting system to their friends, colleagues, and Libyan Election Council.   Research, Practical & Social implications: Following the trial of the second prototype, the evaluators proposed that the Libyan E-Voting System (L-EVS) would assist them enable them to exercise their election rights.   Originality/value: Concerns and issues from previous political elections have spawned over numerous studies regarding voter confidentiality, voting security, and voting accuracy

Enabling Innovation across the Enterprise through Mashup-oriented Collaboration Environments

Nowadays enterprise collaboration is becoming essential for valuable innovation and competitive advantage. This collaboration must be brought a step forward from technical collaboration till collective smart exploitation of global intelligence. The Internet of Future is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable Web Services accessed from all over the Web. This approach has not yet caught on since a global user-service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states our vision with regard to the next generation front-end web technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the Future Internet. This approach will enable the massive deployment of services over Internet in a user-centric fashion. Having this in mind, the rationale behind EzWeb, a reference architecture and implementation of an open Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration Platform that empower its users to co-produce and share instant applications is presente