Election System Modernization Project – Office of the Secretary of State

The Office of the Secretary of State needed to implement a new voter registration and elections management system to be able to support new voting legislation and replace a legacy system that was end-of-life from a security perspective. The state was moving to a centralized system instead of 39 separate, county-maintained voter registration systems.

The Challenge

Client required project management assistance in implementation of a large, complex IT project with many diverse stakeholders. Legislative oversight required extensive documentation and status reporting on public dashboards. Technical solutions to support business requirements needed to be identified and assessed thoroughly by state and county users as well as compliance agencies and partner agencies with system interfaces. Vendor deliverables for the new system needed to be tracked and managed to the SOW.

What Was At Stake

A minimum viable product needed to be in place to run the state elections because the legacy system would no longer be viable in 2020 for security reasons. The legacy system could also not support legislation requiring automatic voter registration and same day voter registration which went into effect July 2019. Delays to project OTB Case Study Revised 11/20/2019 timelines put legislative funding tied to dates at risk. There was additional pressure to complete new development and enhancements beyond minimum viable product prior to the presidential election in 2020.

The Solution

OTB provided project management resources to ensure project goals stayed on track:

Tracking action items from multiple work streams, following up to ensure next steps pursued.
Identifying and tracking project risks.
Meeting management, scheduling, development of materials, and documentation / notes.
Status reporting.
Experience with Agile processes
Developing a vendor management plan and project management plan.
Maintaining an Integrated Project Schedule for all project work streams.
Tracking incidents in the ticket management system and associate with items in vendor ticket system.
Develop outreach to county stakeholders to ensure technical solutions worked locally.
Develop surveys for technical discovery.

Results

OTB project management resources kept IT and business resources in alignment.

Ensured technical solutions met business needs and maintained compliance with state regulation.
Performed extensive outreach to county IT contacts to ensure local network solutions in place or support provided – keeping track of all 39 counties so the IT lead could focus on solutioning.
Covered all status reporting so client project management resources could focus on communications and stakeholder management.
Managed documents for easy access.