The IT Department at the Struer Municipality is presumably several steps ahead of many others when preparing for the upcoming Danish parliamentary elections. When Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen finally presses the election button, the municipality in the Central Denmark Region will be as ready for the elections as humanly possible. Their election PCs run without a single hitch using a solution developed by CapaSystems
The Municipality has been CapaSystems’ client since 2018. Throughout this time, they have been using CapaInstaller and have continuously purchased Mobile Device Management and CapaPacks, CapaImages, and CapaDrivers as additional services.
Struer Municipality decided, before the Danish Defence Opt-Out Referendum on June 1, 2022, to investigate if it was possible to run their election PCs via CapaInstaller.
It became a story of success.
There is nothing like an upcoming election that can make the guys at any municipal IT Department heave a deep sigh, followed by another one… and yet another one. They know that the responsibility for ensuring that the polling booths’ machinery runs like clockwork lies with them and them only. And this may as well give them a bit more extra gray hair and some sleepless nights. The fear of election chaos, long queues at the polling booths, and manual emergency procedures with paper ballots as long as your arm is hardly unjustified.
The dream would naturally be to provide reliable digital support to the election. However, the reality regarding elections is that this is a very complex task subject to strict regulation by law and challenging to set up routines for.
Risk of Faults and Defects
- Incorrect setup of PC type with the proper configuration
- Manual fixes based on KMD documents
- Incalculable time consumption
This was why the Struer Municipality decided, before the Danish Defence Opt-Out Referendum on June 1, 2022, to investigate if it was possible to run their election PCs via CapaInstaller.
“When we talk about elections, there is plenty of security associated with setting up the machines. We have an entire document with guidelines from KMD — and we forwarded this requirements document to Capa so that they could prepare a tailored package. And we got EVERYTHING we had dreamed of and then some in less time than we had expected. We were quite impressed,” explains IT consultant Niels Peter Jørgensen, Struer Municipality.
When Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen presses the election button, the IT department at Struer Municipality will be as ready as possible.
“We look forward to the forthcoming Danish parliamentary elections with confidence and poise — whenever they are called. When things are running as they did on 1 June, this is a task that we at the IT Department would sign up for at any time”
Niels Peter Jørgensen
IT Consultant, Struer Municipality
12 Hours Slashed From a Day’s Work
The package was tested and calibrated on-site in cooperation with one of CapaSystems’ experienced Senior Consultants — and then the entire setup had to stand the test of time.
“We tested the hell out of it. We sat in a meeting room with three PCs and ran through the entire procedure.” And we were setting check marks along the entire way, continues Niels Peter Jørgensen and explains how 12 hours were slashed from the expected time for counting paper mail-in ballots alone:
“The preparation of the 20 election PCs for the seven polling stations went without a single hitch (it took between 5 and 30 minutes per computer), so we allotted the day before the election to counting mail-in ballots. We are usually ready with this at midnight, but we were prepared at midday. When our election official called in the afternoon to check how far ahead we were and found out that we were ready, he thought we were joking with him. No one could comprehend that this was true.
And the election day… Well, it all went like clockwork. No problems. No panic.
Election Day in Peace
“It was a great experience through and through. The work involved in properly configuring the PC types may sound very simple, but it quickly gets highly annoying when something does not work. Then panic breaks out, and any focus disappears at once. This time we were able to shut down everything in peace and by all the regulations, then transfer everything to USB sticks, pack the machines in the same plastic boxes they had arrived in, and put them in quarantine.
When Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen presses, as expected, the election button in the autumn, the Struer Municipality will be as ready as humanly possible.
“We look forward to the forthcoming Danish parliamentary elections with confidence and poise — whenever they are called. When things are running as they did on 1 June, this is a task that we at the IT Department would sign up for at any time,” concludes Niels Peter Jørgensen.
CapaSystems ValgPC
The experiences from the Struer Municipality have caused CapaSystems to develop a solution so that all Danish municipalities can automate the installation and configuration of their Election PCs trouble-free. The solution is called CapaSystems ValgPC and is naturally based on all predefined guidelines.
CapaSystems ValgPC speeds up the work on the Election PCs’ setup and reduces the risk of manual errors.
The benefits are palpable:
- Quick configuration of the ValgPCs
- Automated configuration that reduces the risk of manual errors
- Follows the latest setup guidelines
- Select among five different Election PC types:
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- PCA — Election Secretary
- PCB — Election Official
- PCC — Election Official
- PCD — Election Official
- PCE — Reserve PC