CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights
[2] Official Sarasota Audit Complete; E-Voting Activity Continues
[3] Chronicle of Higher Education Prints USACM Letter In Response to E-Voting Article
[4] Frances Allen wins ACM’s Turing Award
[5] Offshoring Results in More Offshoring Reports
[6] Commerce Advisory Committee Reviews Innovation Metrics
[7] About USACM
[An archive of all previous editions of Washington Update is available at http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/]
[1] NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS
Below are highlights of the top stories from February. This past month the Congress managed to deal with the FY 2007 Appropriations while starting to assess the Administration’s FY 2008 Budget. There is more detail on each item below, as well as on our weblog at http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog:
* Among other e-voting activities in February, the State of Florida concluded its audit of the Sarasota undervotes, finding no evidence that the machines contributed to the undervotes.
* The Chronicle of Higher Education printed a USACM letter in response to a January article about Kennesaw nesaw State University’s e-voting center.
* Retired IBM researcher Frances Allen is the recipient of this year’s ACM Turing Award - the “Nobel Prize in Computing.”
* The Brookings Institution released a report on offshoring reiterating the importance of innovation in responding the global marketplace and job migration.
* The Department of Commerce’s advisory board on measuring innovation held its first meeting, reviewing economic statistics on innovation.
[2] OFFICIAL SARASOTA AUDIT COMPLETE; E-VOTING ACTIVITY CONTINUES
On February 23, the State of Florida released its audit report concerning the contested undervotes in Sarasota County. Neither the state nor the audit team tasked with examining the voting machines found evidence that the machines contributed to the undervotes, the number of which dwarfed the margin of victory in the House of Representatives race that included Sarasota County. Neither the legal case nor the formal contest process in the House have yet to be concluded, so do not expect this matter to disappear. The audit reports are available online at:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/auditReportSarasota.pdf
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/FinalAudRepSAIT.pdf
The report was met with some controversy as one prominent researcher, USACM member and Princeton Computer Science Professor Ed Felten argued that an undiscovered bug could have contributed to the undervote and the audit team wouldn’t have likely found this flaw:
“What conclusion can we draw? Certainly we cannot say that a bug definitely caused undervotes. But we can say with confidence that the bug theory is still in the running, and needs to be considered alongside the ballot design theory as a possible cause of the Sarasota undervotes. If we want to get to the bottom of this, we need to investigate further, by looking more deeply into undervote patterns, and by examining the voting machine hardware and software.”
His full post on the topic can be found here:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1126
In other e-voting news, in early February the Senate Rules Committee held a hearing on electronic voting. Witnesses included voting researchers and state elections officials. The hearing was noteworthy primarily because it was held by the Senate, which has been relatively silent on electronic voting. No new ground was established in the hearing, but Senator Feinstein, chair of the committee, later asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the voting machines used in Sarasota (as well as other kinds of voting machines) and the associated paper trails. More information on the hearing can be found at:
http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/020707hrg.htm
Among the witnesses were Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey (both Democrats). Rep. Holt has championed electronic voting reform for several years, and Senator Nelson is very concerned about avoiding another incident like the one in Sarasota. Both men introduced legislation that requires, among other things, that electronic voting machines produce a voter verified paper trail. Their legislation can be found at:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h811ih.txt.pdf (House Bill)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s559is.txt.pdf (Senate Bill)
Both bills deal with the paper trail, and include very specific requirements for the paper trail and testing labs. In addition, the legislation would establish audit boards at the state level to handle audits of elections.
Additionally, Rep. DeGette (D-Colorado) has introduced legislation that would require electronic poll books to be tested in the same way that electronic voting machines are. Given she represents part of Denver, which had a very big problem with poll books in the 2006 elections, this bill is no surprise.
Finally, in Election Assistance Commission action, the EAC met in February to discuss its lab certification program. Until recently, the testing was handled through an interim program, meant to handle the transition from the previous arrangement under the National Association of State Election Directors. This program ended on March 5. Two labs have been certified under the new, full program, which will be administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
[3] CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION PRINTS USACM LETTER IN RESPONSE TO E-VOTING ARTICLE
In January, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the unique relationship between the State of Georgia and the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University. This quote captures the basic thrust of the article (available online with subscription):
“The center [at KSU] has received attention in Washington lately as scientists and government officials search for ways to reform election procedures nationwide and look to states for new ideas. Some election experts laud Georgia for its centralized, orderly approach to running elections, crediting it with increasing voter participation. Others say the university has compromised its independence and is essentially giving the state political cover for its controversial decision to require all voting precincts to use electronic-voting machines.”
One of the several points of contention in the article was the closed nature of KSU’s enterprise. According to the article, the center believes the workings of the election process should be kept secret. This is at odds with a number of prominent security researchers that believe that security issues should be brought to the public’s attention with care, in order to improve the security of information systems. This is particularly true of e-voting machines, because the election system’s integrity is dependent on transparency.
The security discussion focused on whether e-voting machines were hackable and on paper trails currently being produced by some DREs, usually with printers added ad hoc to support paper trail requirements. Merle S. King, the chair of KSU’s computer science department and director of the center said that “We’ve held 3,000 elections on this equipment,” he says. “We can’t hack it, and I have the source code. We can’t break the system.” Setting aside several studies that have revealed significant security flaws in e-voting systems (for a selecting list of reports see footnotes 1-4 in USACM’s July, 2006 letter to Congress), this focus misses the risks from insider fraud or unforeseen errors. Mr. King also criticized the current implementation of paper trails on many DREs, which consist of printing to a continuous thermal roll of paper. These systems are clearly flawed, but as our letter points out, there are other, more reliable, ways generating voter-verified paper audit trails or ballots.
You can see our an edited version of our letter in the March 2 issue of the Chronicle, and the full version at:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=473
Our July 2006 letter to Congress is available at:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/Letters/USACM_Evoting_Comments.pdf
[4] FRANCES ALLEN WINS ACM’S TURING AWARD
IBM Fellow Emerita Frances E. Allen, perhaps best known for her work in program optimization, is the 2006 recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Turing Award. Considered by many to be the computing equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Turing Award is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field.
The first female recipient of the award, Dr. Allen has made significant contributions to computing in compiler design, machine architecture and security codes, among other aspects of computing. As the Chair of the Turing Award Committee, Ruzena Bajcsy, noted, “Her contributions have spanned most of the history of computer science, and have made possible computing techniques that we rely on today in business and technology.”
Named for the British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the Turing Award has been given annually since 1966 and comes with a $100,000 prize. The award will be formally presented at ACM’s annual awards banquet this June in San Diego. We extend a hearty congratulations to Dr. Allen.
[5] OFFSHORING RESULTS IN MORE OFFSHORING REPORTS
The Brookings Institution released a report in February exploring how offshoring impacts local economies in the U.S. and how public policy should respond. It isn’t a mystery that offshoring and globalization cause major upheaval in job markets, particularly technology jobs that are fairly routine. The question has always been what to do about it. Like a number of reports that argue fostering innovation is crucial to competing in a global economy, the report specifically calls for increased emphasis on innovation-based policies.
The report has a collection of well-worn recommendations: the U.S. should work toward leveling the playing field by focusing on lowering tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade, enforce global trade rules against product piracy, create enforceable labor standards in trade agreements, and spread health care costs across a wider swath of the U.S. population. These are coupled with some pro-innovation policies that are a bit different:
* Create a new knowledge tax credit allowing companies to take a 40 percent credit on increases in expenditures on research and experimentation, global standard-setting, and workforce training.
* Place more emphasis on start-ups and private/state partnerships by creating a new $1 billion fund for a competitive matching grant program to co-invest in state-supported technology-based initiatives.
* Create a program similar to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to aid small- and medium-sized firms in improving their productivity.
* Increase research funding for “service science” (studying systematic ways of improving service sector productivity) through the National Science Foundation.
* Emphasize nonroutine problem-solving skills in curriculum.
* Extend federal and state financial aid programs to part-time students.
* Expand NSF’s Advanced Technological Education Program, which promotes partnerships between educational institutions (largely two-year colleges) and employers to improve the training of technicians in high-tech fields.
The report stays focused on the short-term, with a focus more on application of technology and applied research. The “innovation” portion is silent on what many other studies see as the key to long-term economic growth – boosting investments in the basic research enterprise.
There are several more recommendations dealing with workforce policies (such as the commonly called for extension of trade displacement assistance to the service sector), business practices, and state and regional strategies. These and more recommendations can be found on pages 14-19 of the report, which is available online at:
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20070131_offshoring.pdf
[6] COMMERCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE REVIEWS INNOVATION METRICS
A high-profile government advisory group on innovation met in Washington on February 22. Its objective is to make recommendations for new and revised metrics to better capture innovative activity. We noted this group in December, shortly after it was formed. The agenda, members, and other documents related to the committee and their first meeting can be found online at:
http://www.innovationmetrics.gov/
The group is focused on business and economic measures, as befits a Department of Commerce group. The Committee Chair is Carl Schramm, President and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a foundation focused on economic research and entrepreneurship. Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez attended the meeting, but let the committee direct the discussion.
After discussion encompassing the different kinds of innovation, as well as the different ways companies measure that innovation, the group came to some preliminary points of consensus:
* Since only simple tasks can be effectively captured with a single metric, the committee will develop a group of metrics.
* A core part of these metrics will be productivity. This would not be the output per hour measurement more commonly publicized, but total factor productivity measurement - total output per unit of total input.
* The best measures will do more than simply observe economic activity, they will be able to spot emerging trends, firms and industries.
* To avoid creating a whole system from scratch, the committee will examine changes to the system of national accounts - the series of economic statistics gathered by several different agencies. This follows a recommendation from a National Academies report released today and co-authored by one of the committee members, Dale Jorgenson.
* Measures will cover the different kinds of innovation: user centered, firm focused, incremental, radical, process, product, etc.
The committee is just starting its work. We will track its efforts and make updates as warranted.
[7] ABOUT USACM
USACM is the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM is an educational and scientific society uniting the world’s computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
For more information about USACM and ACM, see:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/about.html
BACK ISSUES
For earlier editions of the ACM Washington Update, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe to ACM’s Washington Update newsletter, send an e-mail to listserv@acm.org with “subscribe WASHINGTON-UPDATE “First Name” “Last Name” (no quotes) in the body of the message.
To unsubscribe, simply include the “SIGNOFF WASHINGTON-UPDATE” command in an email to listserv@acm.org.
David B. posted this at 2:25 pm ET | Filed in ACM/USACM News | Permanent Link |Trackbacks
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://usacm.acm.org/usacm/weblog/wp-trackback.php/475
None at this time.