The Principles Established by the Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)5 on Standards for E-voting Applied to Other Channels of Remote Voting

E-voting is highly suspicious to many citizens and institutions. Past pilot implementations ended before Supreme Courts and mostly not in favour of e-voting. Beside these political and legal battles regarding e-voting, postal voting seems to be commonly accepted and not in question. Motivated by a landmark ruling of the Austrian Constitutional Court in 2016, which led to the revocation of the run-off elections result due to irregularities with postal voting, this paper analyses whether current postal voting regulations and standards in Germany comply to the principles established by the latest Council of Europe (CoE) recommendation on standards for e-voting. Both voting channels are channels for remote voting, hence principles established for one channel must, in the view of the author, also be fully applicable for the other channel. This paper applies the standards set by the recommendation to e-voting to the more commonly used remote voting channel postal voting and concludes that most of these standards cannot be met

Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)5 and e-Voting Protocol Design

The Corona pandemic has created a push towards digitization in a number of fields, not least in the public sector including democratic processes. This of course includes an increased interest in e-voting via the Internet. The Council of Europe has a long-standing history of work in the field including two Recommendations – (2004)11 and (2017)5 – which have become the de facto yardstick against which every e-voting system is measured. Rec(2017)5 builds on a decade of experience with e-voting and particularly strengthens two concepts important in any electronic voting system: Voting secrecy and auditability/verifiability. This has distinct implications for the design of e-voting protocols. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact on what arguably are the most popular voting protocol families, envelope and token protocols. How does the modified Recommendation impact on the viability of protocols and protocol design? The paper first presents the Council of Europe Recommendation and the technical issues it addresses. Then a model is introduced to assess a voting protocol against the Recommendation; a typical envelope and a token protocol are assessed in view of the model and finally the two assessments are compared including policy recommendations for a path to e-voting implementation

Digitisation and system integration in the public sector - Consequences for teaching

The digitisation of public sector ICT is driven by a number of factors, which are not altogether dissimilar from the private industries: Increased self-service via the Internet, the Internet of Things (IoT), real-time business intelligence and the advent of integrated information systems as the “backbone” of organisational ICT. This fundamentally changes the landscape of public sector ICT. Particularly the smart cities concept has become a main driver of this evolution, whereby the smart cities concept heavily relies on an intelligent infrastructure that is the large-scale application of IoT. However, how does this translate into public sector-oriented education? This paper presents a university level teaching programme that covers the topics of integrated information systems for the environment described above. The paper deals with the research question how to embed such a programme in a conventional public sector-oriented university course programme. It details the didactic specificities and analyses the feedback from the roll out. It also analyses the prior knowledge required from students and the changes in other elements of a public administration course programme necessitated by a digitisation orientation

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits—almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Digitalisierung, ERP und die Universitätsausbildung für die öffentliche Verwaltung

PräsentationAbstractDie Digitalisierung hat auch die öffentliche Verwaltung vollständig umgeformt; Treiber sind dabei vor allem Web-basierte und Cloud-Systeme, radikal verbilligte (und damit ubiquitär einsetzbare) Sensornetzwerke und der langsam einsetzende Einsatz von künstlicher Intelligenz. Diese Innovationen erfordern allerdings ein zentrales ERP-System, das Stammdaten und Backendprozesse handhabt: Was nützt es etwa die kommunalen Mülltonnen mit Sensoren auszustatten, wenn die eingehenden Signale über den Füllstand in einem Spreadsheetprogramm weiterverarbeitet werden? Vor allem Konzepte wie die Smart City lassen daher Informationssysteme der öffentlichen Verwaltung immer mehr wie Systeme der „Industrie 4.0“ aussehen, ohne allerdings den spezifischen Charakter der öffentlichen Verwaltung deshalb zu verlieren (Prosser 2018). In der universitären Ausbildung für diesen Bereich dominieren allerdings nur allzu oft Linienheft und Kreidetafel. Dem abzuhelfen wurde von der Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung und Finanzen Ludwigsburg und der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien gemeinsam mit Partnern aus Ungarn und Moldau eine Sequenz von zunächst zwei Lehrveranstaltungen entwickelt, die speziell für den Donauraum geeignet sein sollten. Folgende Inhalte werden vermittelt: (i) Prozess- und Datenmanagement für die öffentliche Verwaltung, (ii) Haushaltsmanagement mit SAP FM und (iii) Kostenrechnung und Logistik (CO, MM, PP) in einem Wirtschaftshof in einer virtuellen Gemeinde. Neben den operativen Prozessen wird dabei auch Customizing vermittelt. Die Lehrveranstaltungen sind an den beteiligten Hochschulen ausgerollt, SAP-Mandant, Lehrbuch und unterstützende Unterlagen liegen in englischer, deutscher und rumänischer Sprache vor. Ein Ausrollen bei weiteren Partnern, darunter zwei Hochschulen in Rumänien, ist in Vorbereitung. Der vorgeschlagene Beitrag stellt zunächst das Lehrprogramm sowie die geplanten Erweiterungen vor, zeigt aber auch auf, welche Schwierigkeiten Contententwicklung für die Ausbildung im öffentlichen Bereich darstellt (Müller-Török et al 2019): Sprache, Währungen, zum Teil vollkommen unterschiedliche rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen oder beispielsweise Umsatzsteuervorschriften für die öffentliche Verwaltung. ReferenzenMüller-Török, R., Prosser, A., Schenk, B. Digitisation and system integration in the public sector – Consequences for teaching; Nemeslaki, A. et al.: Central and Eastern European eDem and eGov Days 2019, Facultas/OCG, Wien, (2019), pp. 189-197. Prosser, A. What the Smart City in the Danube Region can learn from Industry 4.0; Hansen, H. et al.: Central and Eastern European eDem and eGov Days 2018, Facultas/OCG, Wien, (2018), pp. 191-201.2

Organisierter Briefwahlbetrug – eine europäische Realität. Eine Analyse anhand von Beispielen aus dem UK und aus Bayern

Die deutschsprachige Literatur zu e-Democracy und generell zu Wahlen kennt Wahlbetrug und insbesondere organisierten Wahlbetrug nur aus anderen Kontinenten; in Kontinentaleuropa sind es in der Eigenwahrnehmung stets Einzelfälle, bspw. der Bürgermeister aus Unterrabnitz-Schwendgraben, der bei den letzten burgenländischen Landtagswahlen bundesweite Bekanntheit erreichte. Im UK hingegen gibt es seit über 10 Jahren eine Häufung von derartigen Fällen, meist innerhalb geschlossener Gemeinden, die auch zu einer entsprechenden Rechtsprechung, Polizeimaßnahmen und einer adäquaten wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung führte. In den letzten Wochen wurde der Fall einer – noch nicht strafrechtlich verurteilten – Lokalpolitikerin bekannt, der dazu führte, dass die Stadtrats- und Bürgermeisterwahl in Geiselhöring vom 16. März 2014 für ungültig erklärt wurde und nun im Februar 2015 wiederholt wird. Organisierter Wahlbetrug passt nicht zum Selbstbild von Österreich und Deutschland – es ist an der Zeit, einzusehen, dass Distanzwahlverfahren generell dieses Problem in sich tragen. Beim e-Voting ist es bekannt und wird diskutiert, bei der Briefwahl bislang nicht. Die hier aufgezeigten Mechanismen, insbesondere die im Fall Geiselhöring angewandten, haben unmittelbare Auswirkung auf unsere etablierten und für sicher angesehenen Briefwahlverfahren. Der Beitrag analysiert die tw. bereits bekannten Schwächen der Briefwahl und anderer Distanzwahlverfahren und belegt die mögliche Wirkung von organisiertem Wahlbetrug. Lösungsansätze werden aufgezeigt

Digital Competences in Public Sector Education as a Prerequisite for e-Government

e-Government in Germany is usually not ranked top of the class in Europe. Rankings, such as the EU eGovernment Benchmark 2022, UN E-Government Development Index and others show that Germany is rather poorly ranked among the developed nations of the world. The authors assume that there is a correlation between the quality of Public Sector Education regarding digital competences and the quality of e-Government the so digitally educated civil servants can deliver. Civil servants in Germany usually graduate from one of the approximately 20 main universities of public administration; hence, an overview of the digital competences taught there is the core of this article. The main result is that both the quantity and the quality of digital competences taught need to be improved and, in the worst case depend on the university chosen, even zero digital competences are taught to the future civil servants