Accenture Helps Department of Defense Develop Secure Internet Registration and Voting Demonstration for 2004 Election

WASHINGTON; Aug. 7, 2003 – Accenture is working with the Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) and several states and counties to design and build a new voting technology system for the SERVE project, which stands for Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. Using SERVE, thousands of absentee Uniformed Services personnel, their dependents, and overseas U.S. citizens will have the opportunity to register to vote and cast their ballots over the Internet from anywhere in the world. County election officials will use the SERVE system to receive voter registration applications, provide ballots to voters, and accept completed ballots. These officials will use their existing election administration systems to process registrations and ballots.

“Accenture is proud to be participating in this nationally important project that will pioneer new methods to help assure that U.S. citizens overseas, including our Armed Forces and their families, have the opportunity to vote,” said Meg McLaughlin, partner and chief executive of Accenture eDemocracy Services. “By bringing together leading-edge voting technologies in a secure, hosted environment, Accenture is helping FVAP meet its Congressional mandate to test the capabilities and integrity of Internet voting to serve this important group of voters during the 2004 elections. Accenture is a leader in developing secure voter registration and elections systems and we’re putting our industry knowledge to work in developing SERVE.”

The SERVE voting system will accept voter registration applications and absentee ballot requests over the Internet for the 2004 primaries and general election. Uniformed Services members away from their voting jurisdiction, as well as citizens living outside the U.S., who are residents of one of the states and counties that volunteered to participate in the demonstration, will be eligible to access SERVE. States expected to have participating counties include Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington.

The SERVE voting system that the Accenture team is developing includes an end-to-end registration and voting system, integrated with local voter registration systems and processes; ballot generation and tabulation systems; digital certificates; and multi-layer security protection. SERVE is designed to permit eligible citizens to register to vote, check their registration status, update registration information, view their ballot, vote the ballot remotely, return the ballot, verify voted ballot selections and check vote status.

Accenture is providing program management, security engineering, software engineering and systems integration support to this congressionally mandated program. Major members of the Accenture team are AFFINA, Hart InterCivic, HP and VeriSign. Once SERVE is up and running, the Accenture team will provide ongoing technical and help desk support up through and following the November 2004 presidential elections.

The SERVE system will be deployed to participating jurisdictions for use in the 2004 elections. A full report on the results of the SERVE project will be delivered to Congress in June 2005.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting and technology services company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them realize their visions and create tangible value. With deep industry expertise, broad global resources and proven experience in consulting and outsourcing, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills, alliances and technologies. With more than 80,000 people in 47 countries, the company generated net revenues of $11.6 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2002. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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