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Ten Thousand Hours of Privatization, Part Two
Weeks 10-13 of the Texas Voter Database Project

By Greg Moses

During weeks ten to thirteen (January 2005) of the Texas Voter Database Project we can see two significant transformations of the power matrix between the state and its private contractors. From one side, private contractors IBM and Hart InterCivic intensify their process of extracting from state employees their practical knowledge of election management, the better to privatize that knowledge into a commercial product.

From the other side, we see the state project manager imposing on Team IBM a meticulous process of plans and reports that discipline the private contractors into more transparent structures of information and accountability. The famous paperwork of state bureaucracy is force fed.

Also, in the process of writing up this report on the January activities, The Texas Civil Rights Review is beginning to feel the difference between reporting on state agencies and private companies.

For one thing, part of the reason that state agencies exist is to be involved in public accountability and criticism. We have logged a dozen hours this week viewing documents at the capitol. If the work resulting from docs supplied by the Secretary of State were to criticize the SOS, there might be consequences, but the game would be well known, and there would be no stock price to defend, no truly colossal sum of money at stake.

On the other hand, we notice that we do not spend any time at the headquarters of IBM or Hart InterCivic going through their documents. And if the results of our public research were to be perceived as critical of a global computer consulting firm, there might also be consequences, but the consequences would be of a different king (quite a nice typo I think). One effect of privatization therefore is to shift significant activities into realms where the games of public accountability and criticism meet new constraints, where also the consequences of debate are tossed into a context of stock prices and product sales. And when that happens, well, why do you think the business press is ever so cheery in comparison to the political press?

So if you are among the news consumers today who feel that even the political press has grown too cheery lately, perhaps that is just one more symptom of the shift we are all experiencing from a public to a privatized world order.

* * *

During the second week of January (week ten) the Colorado branch of Hart InterCivic invites a visit from two top-level administrators at the Elections Division of the SOS. It is difficult to imagine that Hart could do otherwise.

The makers of proprietary election equipment could hardly develop their wares with confidence if they did not know first what the public servants know about the practicalities of election management. The Colorado branch of Hart InterCivic first developed the eSlate voting system that we use in Travis County. Now they are developing a voter registration database, election management system, and jury wheel, all to be delivered to the state as a private product more technically known as COTS or Commercial Off-The-Shelf.

Although Hart is lead subcontractor for the project because of its ability to deliver an election management COTS, the product is not really ready for delivery yet. First, it has to be developed. As the visit to Colorado shows, the state is an active partner in helping Hart to develop the very same COTS that the state will license from Hart at a cost of $4 million, as soon as it is actually delivered.

In five years time the state will be able to buy back that COTS at “fair market value.” But first, as we say, the COTS must be developed and for this, forgive the repetition, public servants have to be invited to Colorado to meet with private contractors. And among those private contractors are private Subject Matter Experts who will later charge the state a hundred or two hundred bucks per hour to help solve any critical problems that might arise. Perhaps the reader is aware of famous economic principles of efficiency exemplified in this process. No doubt the principles are well known in business schools.

Also during week ten, Team IBM submits an invoice for $28,000 to cover its December work and a bill for $5,853 in travel and living expenses. A steering committee for the Secretary of State’s office (SOS) meets on Jan. 20.

During week eleven, billable hours are up to 4,230 and one more deliverable is delivered, but fifteen items “expected to be delivered” by Team IBM do not get delivered. We are beginning to understand why the state’s project manager would look back on this as a “poor start.”

Some of the early difficulties in getting started derive from the state’s failure to purchase equipment on schedule. The contract plan called for the state to purchase a million dollars in hardware and software (on top of the $12 million to contractors IBM and Hart InterCivic). But in a snafu officially known as Project Issue Number 001, it turns out the state couldn’t purchase computer equipment in such a straightforward way.

The problem with major computing tasks in Texas state government is that they are supposed to be consolidated into a San Angelo facility managed by Northrup Grumman. So the state project manager puts in a change order to move the project equipment to San Angelo as required by state law. It takes a couple of months to finally decide that the project will be kept in Austin as planned, but meanwhile Team IBM is having difficulty understanding the status of purchasing orders for hardware.

Back during week six the IBM project manager reported hearing from one person that the equipment had been ordered, while another person told her no, it had not. What she finds out during week seven is that the order cannot be placed for Austin equipment until the purchase is authorized by means of a special waiver from the Legislative Budget Board, since the hardware will not be placed in San Angelo.

Meanwhile, thanks to that meeting in Colorado, Team IBM reports that critical requirements have been collected for two crucial pieces of the election management puzzle: Election Night Reporting (ENR) and Ballot Definition (BD).

The Team IBM project manager is having troubles of her own keeping up with meticulous administrative details demanded by the state’s project manager. As she turns in a new, revised work plan that is “deliverable driven rather than task driven” she makes a formal complaint for the record. “Increased administrative tasks have caused deliverables and work papers to slide.” It is pleasing to see how she appropriates the new language of deliverables in order to articulate her complaint. She logs her complaint as Project Issue Number 002, assigns it a priority level ‘H’ for high, and places it on an Issues List to be either analyzed, brought up for decision, or resolved during future reporting periods. In fact, whether she knows it or not, her days as IBM project manager will soon end.

In the hardware/software area, a “development environment” has been set up where Team IBM can share project files with the state, but there is still no election system to test yet, because first of all the hardware hasn’t arrived, and second of all the VR (or voter registration software) is still in demo stage at Hart.

During week twelve, the Team IBM administrator uses a brand new status report format (version four) to say that she has helped to produce two new plan docs, two strategy docs, and “revised project work plan number 80.” And on Jan. 28, the project convenes a Focus Group of 32 people from 15 counties to share progress to date.

As January changes to February, ten more plans are delivered during week thirteen while intensive meetings continue in Colorado. As Team IBM also convenes meetings with the state IT staff to discuss ENR and BD ar
chitecture, Hart says that its Voter Registration build is 90 percent complete, awaiting crucial review by one state expert who happens to be not available at the moment. A third “project issue” is added: when will the scope of ENR and BD be defined?

And finally, in the state’s report for week thirteen, original completion dates are x-ed out and moved back. In week thirteen the project is officially behind schedule.

To be continued in series.

Thanks to a comment at PinkDome we checked out the Congressional voting
record of Chris Bell who will likely be running for Governor of
Texas. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) gives Bell a rating of 100
percent for his votes in the 108th Congress and three special notes for
his co-sponsorship of legislation that was not rated. So we’ll
call it a rating of 103 percent, which is quite a curve-setter for the
rest of the Texas delegation.

In the PinkDome interview, Bell expresses a personal preference against
gay marriage. This reminds us of dedicated Civil Rights activists
who have personal preferences about inter-racial marriage also, but whose
wisdom never wavers from public commitments to providing a vigorous Civil
Rights context for the exercise of personal preference. Just as
codes have thankfully withered away that would outlaw inter-racial or
inter-ethnic marriage, there is no reason to replant those mean seeds
in the area of sexual orientation. So we are glad to see that Bell has a personal preference for Civil Rights.

Only Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) matches Bell’s rankings by the HRC on all
counts, upholding the fine tradition of her district as the conscience
of Texas in Washington (here are the voters who elected Barbara Jordan
and Mickey Leland). Although Eddie Bernice
Johnson (D-Dallas) also gets 100 percent, she doesn’t score the extra
credit. Honorable mentions go to Lloyd Doggett (D-South Texas)
and Martin Frost (D-Dallas) whose single shortcoming was a failure to
support permanent partners for immigrants.

Republican re-districting deliberately targeted liberal white seats
held by Bell, Frost, and Doggett, with the result that only Doggett
survived. A Bell campaign for Governor appears to hold clear
promise of a Civil Rights renewal in Texas. We only hope that
putting things so clearly won’t hurt him too much. Pasted below
are the reasons why HRC rated Bell as a perfect lawmaker.–gm

1) MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT, H.J. RES. 106, ROLL CALL VOTE 494
Th e Federal Marriage Amendment, introduced in the House by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo.,
would enshrine discrimination into the U.S. Constitution by defi ning marriage as the union
between one man and one woman and prohibiting federal and state laws from conferring same-sex
couples with marital status and “the legal incidents thereof,” thereby endangering civil unions and
domestic partnership benefi ts. Th e amendment was brought to the House fl oor for a vote Sept. 30,
2004. It needed a 2/3 majority in the House to pass. Th e amendment failed by a vote of 227 to 186:
Democrats — 36 yes, 158 no; Republicans — 191 yes, 27 no; Independents — 0 yes , 1 no. HRC
opposed this amendment — and the vote is double-weighted in the fi nal House scores.

2) PELOSI MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
AUTHORIZATION. H.R. 4200
On Sept. 28, 2004, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., off ered a non-binding motion to instruct the House
Department of Defense authorization conferees to accept the Senate-passed, Kennedy-Smith hate
crimes amendment. (See Vote 2 in the Senate.) Th is amendment would add real or perceived sexual orientation,
gender and disability to existing law and remove the overly burdensome restriction on federal
involvement in helping investigate and prosecute hate crimes. Th e Pelosi motion passed Sept. 28,
2004, by a vote of 213 to 186. Th irty-three representatives did not vote: Democrats — 182 yes, 9 no;
Republicans — 31 yes, 177 no; Independents — 0 yes, 0 no. HRC supported this motion.

3) MARRIAGE PROTECTION ACT OF 2004, H.R. 3313
Th e House voted July 22, 2004, to pass legislation, introduced by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind.,
that would strip federal court jurisdiction over questions relating to the Defense of Marriage Act,
closing the courtroom doors to a group of Americans. Th e House passed the legislation with a
vote of 233-194, with eight members abstaining. Republicans — 206 yes, 17 no; Democrats
— 27 yes, 176 no; Independents — 0 yes, 1 no. HRC opposed this legislation.

4) LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT HATE CRIMES PREVENTION ACT OF 2004,
H.R. 4204 (CO-SPONSORSHIP)
Members of the House were asked to co-sponsor legislation introduced April 22, 2004, that
would update and expand federal hate crimes laws to cover serious, violent hate crimes committed
because of real or perceived sexual orientation, gender or disability to cover the gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender community. As of Oct. 1, 2004, the measure had 178 co-sponsors:
Democrats — 168; Republicans — 9; Independents — 1.

5) PERMANENT PARTNERS IMMIGRATION ACT, H.R. 832 (CO-SPONSORSHIP)
Members of the House were asked to co-sponsor legislation introduced Feb. 13, 2003, that would
amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and lawful
permanent residents the same immigration benefi ts legal spouses of U.S. residents enjoy. As of Oct. 1,
2004, the measure had 129 co-sponsors: Democrats — 125; Republicans — 2; Independents — 1.
10
REPRESENTATIVE (Party) SCORE q r s t u v w x

6) EARLY TREATMENT FOR HIV ACT OF 2004, H.R. 3859 (CO-SPONSORSHIP)
Members of the House were asked to co-sponsor legislation introduced Feb. 26, 2004, which
would expand Medicaid to people living with HIV and provide states with the option to cover
low-income HIV-infected individuals. As of Oct. 1, 2004, the measure had 142 co-sponsors:
Democrats — 119; Republicans — 22; Independents — 1.

7) EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT, H.R. 3285 (CO-SPONSORSHIP)
Members of the House were asked to co-sponsor legislation introduced Oct. 8, 2003, that would
prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace. As of Oct. 1, 2004,
H.R. 3285 had 180 co-sponsors: Democrats — 165; Republicans — 14; Independents — 1.

8) POLICY PLEDGE OF NON-DISCRIMINATION
Th is Congress, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition worked
together and asked every representative to adopt, voluntarily, a written policy for their own offi ces
indicating that sexual orientation and gender identity and expression are not factors in their employment
decisions. As of Oct. 1, 2004, 150 representatives in the 108th Congress have adopted
this policy: Democrats — 131; Republicans — 18; Independents — 1.

SIGNIFICANT CO-SPONSORSHIPS NOTED BUT NOT SCORED

1) – DENOTES CO-SPONSORSHIP OF DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP BENEFITS AND OBLIGATIONS
ACT OF 2003, H.R. 2426
Th is bill would provide domestic partners of federal employees the same benefi ts available to and
obligations accorded upon spouses of federal employees. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., introduced
this bill to the House on June 11, 2003. As of Oct. 1, 2004, 98 members of the House have cosponsored
this piece of legislation: Democrats — 97; Republicans — 0; Independents — 1.

2) – DENOTES CO-SPONSORSHIP OF TAX EQUITY FOR HEALTH PLAN BENEFICIARIES ACT
OF 2003, H.R. 935
Under the current tax code, employees are taxed on the benefi ts provided to their domestic partners
while benefi ts for spouses are tax free. On Feb. 26, 2003, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., introduced
a bill that would amend the current tax code, allowing employees to exclude from their
gross income the costs of employee-provided health coverage provided to other eligible designated
benefi ciaries, in addition to spouses and dependent children. Th ere were 84 co-sponsors to this
bill as of Oct. 1, 2004: Democrats — 79; Republicans — 4; Independents — 1.

3) – DENOTES CO-SPONSORSHIP OF FAMILY MEDICAL LEAVE INCLUSION ACT, H.R. 1430
Current law does not permit employees covered by the Family Medical Leave Inclusion Act to
take appr

oved leave to care for domestic partners. Th is legislation, introduced by Rep. Carolyn B.
Maloney, D-N.Y., on March 25, 2003, amends the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 to permit
leave to care for domestic partners, among others, if they have a serious health condition. Th is
bill has been co-sponsored by 93 members of the House as of Oct. 1, 2004: Democrats — 91;
Republicans — 1; Independents — 1.

Post 9/11 Doctrine Heads South

By Greg Moses

To paraphrase Forrest Gump: Gringo is as Gringo does. When for instance a row of 92 percent neo-Europeans unfold their lawn chairs in the Arizona desert to spy on Mexicans, things are beginning to look Gringo. When Schwarzenegger praises the work of that vigilante border patrol as it expands into California, that’s looking very Gringo too. But when nobody around you is able to express the least bit of concern, you know you’re living in Gringo Nation for sure.

Yes I know, Schwarzenegger and the border watchers share a language of legality. All they are doing, Schwarzenegger agrees, is assisting in the job of law enforcement because government has failed to do a proper job. But the plain word for this kind of activity is vigilante — not volunteer. And I shall explain why I say this.

When you volunteer for something like border patrolling, you go to the border patrol and say, may I volunteer? Either they have a volunteer program or they don’t and if they do have one, you get yourself coordinated with the proper authorities. The Minutemen showed up to the border independently and announced they would be performing border patrol activities.

If we take Schwarzenegger’s lead in adopting Minuteman language and collapsing the distinction between vigilante and volunteer, how do we stay straight at the same time with his claim that he approves of immigration so long as it is done in a legal manner? As soon as you’ve worked your way into this conceptual pocket, where legal order is most easily recognized in vigilante practice, well, you’ve made it official for the world. We are running a vigilante assisted immigration program.

Not only is Schwarzenegger exercising severe lapse of judgment in confusing his role as terminator with his role of Governor, but he is at the same time underestimating the racist antagonism that underlies the vigilante movement. We hope he does not have to see hugely ugly consequences in order to learn his lesson, but he is taking such an obvious risk in that direction that he can be fairly blamed for gross negligence if this little game he’s playing spills off the board into the streets.

Let me address the underlying racism of the Minuteman movement in a moment, but first let’s be sure we have this vigilante business nailed down, because in Gringo Nation, the vigilante nature of the Minuteman action is not easy for many to perceive. For instance, here is a fresh email:

You are one of many who has repeated the lie that the Minutemen are “vigilantes”. If watching the border and reporting illegal crossings to the border patrol makes one a vigilante, then there are neighborhood watches all across the country that need to be broken up. Given that nobody in the Minutemen has been charged with any crime, taking the law into your own hands is illegal, and that the Minutemen have been under extreme scrutiny, how are they vigilantes? Please explain. If you can’t, then please advise on whether you are stupid, ignorant, or simply incapable of telling the truth.

Okay, if I’m going to go around using Gringo language, then I guess I have to accept accusations that I’m a stupid ignorant liar. Touche. My chickens also come home to roost. But let me try to address the neighborhood watch question.

Here are two web pages. One for the City of Austin Neighborhood Watch Program and one for the Civil Homeland Defense of Tombstone. City of Austin Neighborhood Watch. Civil Homeland Defense of Tombstone. Do you see any difference here? Notice how the webpage for the Neighborhood Watch Program has been posted by the Austin Police Department with a city contact number. And yes, the Tombstone servants of the “sovereign citizens of these United States” also provide a contact phone number, but you can see that one group is coordinating their activity under law enforcement supervision while another group uses language that has a contemptuous vigilante tradition.

The MinuteMan Project offers plain reasons for their invitation to join their voluteer corps and seek training under the Civil Homeland Defense:

the men and women volunteering for this mission are those who are willing to sacrifice their time, and the comforts of a cozy home, to muster for something much more important than acquiring more “toys” to play with while their nation is devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens.

Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious “melting pot.”

The result: political, economic and social mayhem.

Historians will write about how a lax America let its unique and coveted form of government and society sink into a quagmire of mutual acrimony among the various sub-nations that will comprise the new self-destructing America.

Or as a Texas correspondent writes today, Mexican immigrants are “averaging us down.” He taunts: as editor of a Texas Civil Rights Review, I must be calling for a nation of “garbage collectors” that will put me out of business because none of them will be interested to read my work. That’s the gist of his argument in so many words. I wonder when his trash is not picked up, how long does he usually wait to complain about that?

Another correspondent with a Texas Tech email address sends me an article by Frosty Wooldridge, a smiling fellow with a spiffy eponymous website who says the USA is like the Titanic about to go down if we don’t steer clear of a cultural iceberg:

From stem to stern, our English language is under assault and our schools are drowning in ethnic violence, rapes, drugs and gang warfare. In California, Texas, Florida and Arizona, our hospitals suffer bankruptcies from non-paid services for 350,000 annual ‘anchor babies’. Ten million illegal immigrants displace jobs from America’s working poor and depress wages for many others. Leprosy, tuberculosis, Chagas Disease, hepatitis and other diseases ‘pour’ into our country within the bodies of illegal immigrants who avoid health screening before coming on board the United States. Even worse, clashing cultures with religions that celebrate ‘female genital mutilation’ and subjugation of women are growing in enclaves around our country. As Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself can not stand.”

These are the sentiments cresting in the MinuteMan Project. How is Schwarzenegger going to play nice with this movement and promote the immigrant ideal? Is Schwarzenegger’s immigration initiative something like Nixon’s China? Is he going to be able to open doors with this nationalist enclave and bring it out of its isolation? As I say, the risk he takes here he should well enough know. Having stirred this pot, he must be prepared to swallow the consequences.

Some of the MinuteMan sympathies come from self-described “pro-labor pro-environment progressives” who argue that, “If there were no illegal Mexicans, employers would raise wages to attract legal Americans to work.” And I have said from the very beginning of my work on Gringo Vigilantes that there is some force behind this labor analysis. But how much weight do we give to illegal aliens when we assess income tendencies in America? Or to put the question another way, do you know what a scapegoat is?

Real income (adjusted for inflation) has been stagnant for decades, unions have been falling apart, corporations have been seeking third world wages wherever feasible, and we have a plentiful border patrol already. Stories of crossings are not cakewalk stories. So with widespread secular trends that cut across all cultural groups and with law enforcement making things pretty
difficult already, how in the world does a “pro-labor pro-environment progressive” wind up sending ME the email of rebuke when I denounce my solidarity with Gringo Vigilantes?

May I remind my esteemed correspondent that I live in a Right to Work State? Do I see MinuteMen taking their binoculars into the galleries of my legislature? No the MinuteMen pay no attention to economics, unions, corporations, border patrols, or law making because all these things are felt to be out of reach. But they can spy on Mexicans. Their move taps into widespread frustration because people feel that things are slipping away from democratic control, a feeling that Schwarzenegger must admit that he has not been able to reduce.

Of course during times like these, when the answer seems so simple as unfolding a lawn chair, frustrated people will hear any alternative that is just as simple. But a national labor plan will be a truly complex and unprecedented thing to achieve. In order to achieve a national labor plan, we will have to take our eyes off of illegal Mexican immigrants and begin to speak with seriousness about everything else we know.

For instance, where is it written into economic law that the more an economy grows in population the less robust it must become in opportunity? What does an expanding population need in order to thrive? Do we have no answers? Will a shrinking population improve home economics? Shall we just split up into a thousand Luxembourg’s? Or do we have to think about other factors besides immigration and population growth in order to get the qualitative answers that we will need? Even without any immigration before us wouldn’t our economic assumptions require us to eat ourselves alive anyway?

From Mexican to cataclysm lies an obviously tempting scapegoat logic. Is this to be post-9/11 headed South? I’m beginning to feel just a little bit like I did on Sept. 21, 2001, the day after Bush Jr. delivered his post 9/11 manifesto. Has everyone around me lost their minds? Are we to be led so jubilantly into a vigilante future?

When immigrants huddled into New York harbor they disembarked upon a city that offered free colleges. So the answers are not very mysterious. Education is one principle of prosperity that growing nations can practice. In South Texas where is the education that awaits immigrants? The Texas Supreme Court will return from its Fourth of July break this summer to consider litigation over South Texas schools. The state legislature has wasted nearly forty years evading its plain responsibility to fund vigorous educational programs. As a consequence ignorance and stereotypes grow.

Health care also would count in this direction. With a robust public system of health funded like we fund blitzkriegs through Falluja, we wouldn’t be whimpering about our complete inability to visualize a healthy future as more immigrants arrive.

Or labor practices. Factories have been constructed along the borderline during the past generation, and they have been placed just to the South where they can dodge the jurisdiction of OSHA and the Labor Department. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, Texas holds firm to its Right-to-Work allegiance, making worker organization very near impossible on this side of the border also.

Education, health care, and labor policy. Here are three clear areas with outstanding records of wrong-headedness in high places. Instead of motivating responsibility in these areas however Schwarzenegger and his MinuteMen are making a scene over Mexican immigrants. These are old tricks of the Gringo Manual. Starve a population, then blame them for their hunger. Shoot holes through their school budgets then blame them for being unable to learn. Put the hospitals out of reach and blame them for not being well. Prohibit union power and blame them for serving corporate interest. And when they nevertheless make their way in the morning to work, by all means, be sure to blame them for that too.

Flag day came and went. In fact we displayed red, white, and blue lights. But why?

Yes, on the one hand that flag stands for a heritage of slaveocracy, genocide, and empire. If it reminds us of anything, it must remind us of these.

But there are also the “Philadelphia Freedoms” that Elton John sings about. And they are all tangled up in the very same heritage. If we’re talking about the whole picture, it is conflicted, contradictory, and irreducible to an essence.

To comment on this article please visit the comment blog.

So for me Flag Day this year was all about the Michael Jackson jury. As one headline mentioned some official apology that was to come from DC regarding our bloodthirsty heritage of lyncherdom, I found in the Michael Jackson jury the profound sanity of the anti-mob.

On this point we are much divided. While some commentators see in the Michael Jackson acquittal evidence of wealth and celebrity, I see in the disappointment of those same commentators the legacy of the lynch mob.

Flag Day found me hoping that a vital space of respect had just been reopened. And it’s the flag of that space that I most proudly fly. Cheer for Michael Jackson if you will, but cheer for that jury first and the kind of flag that they worked to uphold.

Live Connection with DPS Raises Question
As IBM Gets New Project Manager and State Frets Expectations

Ten Thousand Hours: Part Three
Weeks 14-21 of the Texas Voter Database Project

By Greg Moses

When Texas pays $4 million to license the eRegistry election management software from Hart InterCivic, will it be buying a product that the state has helped to develop? And when the voter management system is hooked up to live records from law enforcement, will the voters be running the state or will the state be running the voters? These questions we ask after going through facts found in project documents for the Texas voter database and election management project, weeks 14-21.

Weeks 14-21 continue to show evidence of intensive knowledge harvesting as developers of the proprietary eRegistry software place so many demands on the expertise of state employees that the employees register a complaint about their ability to keep up. And the contract assumption that Hart InterCivic actually has a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) product to offer the state comes under question when the first release of the software arrives without installation instructions or a users manual.

These weeks also see a change in managers for Team IBM as weekly reports begin to display more detailed summaries of contractor activities.

And the running issue of what it means to privatize functions of public technology finds another prime case study when Hart InterCivic representatives express concern that their March 3 demonstration of software to a focus group of county election officials may result in “disclosures”. The same focus group also raises concerns for the state project manager that “county expectations” also need managing. By the end of the period the state manager is asking for administrative help so that he can be more free to discuss the project more frequently with “external stakeholders”.

As much of the technical activity for this period revolves around live data connections between the Secretary of State (SOS) and Department of Public Safety (DPS), we can also raise questions about a trend in voter management toward live interfaces with law enforcement. Is voter management now a subset of law enforcement? As update information is freely swapped between SOS and DPS, we wonder. Are the voters running the state or is the state running the voters?

Let’s try this answer. The high tech frontier in election management is creating a voting population as a class of administrative privilege that will be more and more pre-screened and qualified to vote. Against this trend a clear “human rights” response is needed: “let all the people vote, period.”

* * *

The IBM weekly status report for Feb. 5-11 has interesting features. For one thing, it is mislabeled week thirteen (it should be week fourteen) which serves as consolation against small-minded perfectionists everywhere who utter dicta about how things really work in the big time.

But more importantly, the document sets a new standard for this $12 million project to build a privatized voter database and election management system for Texas. It serves as documentary evidence that something has changed at the project, and although it bears the name of the initial project manager for Team IBM, the report’s style, format, and presentation hint that the new manager is already doing the old manager’s paperwork.

In the week-fourteen report we glimpse for the first time the full range of activities being conducted by at least ten project components: security team, data migration team, data mart team, voter information programmer, DBA, lead architect, interface team, GIS team, test team, and application team.

The security team for example puts together a meeting between staff from the Secretary of State (SOS) and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) where they work out the difficulties of making secure database connections between the voter registration system and DPS. As the reader may recall from previous articles in this series, the security team for the project will then take the knowledge gained from this meeting between state workers and turn it into a privatized computer solution that can be sold back to the state with service contracts attached.

The same kind of knowledge harvesting is going on with the project DBA (database administrator) who is meeting with “state employees and the data mart team to discuss reporting requirements.” In a handy term for wordplay, the DBA is working up “demoralized” tables that can be used by eRegistry software, a proprietary product of Hart InterCivic. Once the DBA gets clear about the data warehouse design, eRegistry will be “reverse engineered.” According to the contract with the state, “reverse engineering” of eRegistry is something that only Hart is allowed to do.

And this raises an interesting question for intellectual property buffs. If eRegistry is reverse engineered during a public contract with Texas to whom do the rights to the reverse engineered product belong? Is this another case where public money, public expertise, and public functions are all contributing to privatized value of a product in the marketplace? I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s an interesting question to ask.

Knowledge harvesting among state workers has created such “multiple and parallel demands on SOS resources” that state workers say they can hardly keep up with everything that Hart needs them to do. Meanwhile, the state is letting Team IBM use its screen reader to run tests with.

Also busy down at DPS is the interface team figuring out how to make the connections for live checks of drivers license and social security numbers, so that numbers placed on voter registration applications can be checked against the DPS database. Again, fresh questions come up for public inquiry. What all is attached to these numbers down at the DPS? What events can be triggered by the “live checks” that come in, other than a simple yes or no from DPS to SOS that a number does or does not belong to a name?

In addition to “live checks” of numbers, the interface team is also working on getting “signature images” from DPS that can be matched to signatures on voter registration cards. Remember you sign your drivers license, and that signature image is stored on a DPS computer. For some reason which is probably not very permanent, the DPS declines to offer up its signature images — I mean YOUR signature images — to the SOS.

By week fifteen it’s official, there is a new manager on board for Team IBM.

The state project manager during week sixteen reports that he has begun working with the new project manager for Team IBM who “is getting his arms around the project.” We don’t yet know what the new IBM manager had to say for weeks sixteen and seventeen (those reports were not included) but by week eighteen, the project plan is in version 84, and the list of project issues for Team IBM has grown in three weeks time from eight to 23.

Two of the new project issues in week 18 revolve around a 25-member county focus group that meets in Austin on March 3 (week 17). SOS has assembled the focus group in an effort to sell more counties on the project. But Hart registers “disclosure concerns” about all these folks seeing its eRegistry prototype, and the state project manager worries about “Counties Expectation Management.” Belonging to the focus group places public election officials in the dicey position of previewing plans for election management (a very public issue) and proprietary software (a very private property) at one and the same time. What does Hart fear they will talk about? What does the state project manager fear they have come to expect from this project? If we put the two worries together, may we infer that all did not go well on March 3?

March 3 turns out to be an unlucky day for another reason. Someone
from Team IBM copies the entire project folder and then “inadvertently” places the duplicate back onto the public workspace. For the next two weeks, updates to the project will be split between the two folders creating “confusion, lost comment documents, and process flow breakdown.” When the glitch is discovered about March 18, the state project manager will have to spend time bringing the two files back together.

Week 19 is a crucial week for the project. It is the deadline for Hart InterCivic to deliver its first COTS software, the Commercial Off-The-Shelf product that the state will eventually pay $4 million to use. On the due date for release of Hart One, the state receives a letter from Hart with a URL and password. On March 17, Hart presents a “walkthrough” of the software. But documentation was yet to be found. On the face of things, what Hart delivered does not yet look like a COTS.

Hart follow-up items appear in the report for week 20. The eRegistry configuration guide is reviewed on March 21. And on March 28, notice is received from the escrow service that deposits Hart software (actually this is a week 21 event).

During week 21 the external interface team meets with IBM and SOS to talk about tech submit issues and directory structure. External interfaces for the project have grown from an initial 10 to 19 since the project started. Does this mean that the number of databases hooked up to the election system has nearly doubled in scope?

According to plans contained in IBM reports, it looks like the week of April 18 will be eventful. There is a County Focus Group scheduled for April 19 to review the first Hart release of mid-March. On April 20 the SOS staff will be tasked to define their business rules in ways that are pertinent to the logic of eRegistry. And on April 22 Jeff Osborn will be in town.