Paper on Innovative Practices in Management of Elections

Paper on Innovative Practices in Management of Elections At Symposium on “Sharing Best Electoral Practices” South Zone 12 th May 2010, Bangalore By Amlan Biswas, DEO Chitradurga

Innovative Practices • Innovation is change in established methods / procedures to improve quality of results or reduce costs / time. • In Election management in Chitradurga from 2007 -08 to 2010 -11 including ULB, MLA, MP, MLC and now GP elections the innovative practices attempted were limited to measures for reducing costs, improving planning and ensuring information symmetry through better communication

Planning, Budgeting and PERT • Program Evaluation and Review Technique Chart was prepared with all activities, subactivities, timelines, implementational responsibilities and monitoring responsibilities. • Lower Staff were encouraged to have their own PERTs • A detailed budget on interlinked excel sheets was prepared which has been used as a template for subsequent elections with a little tweaking. This has enabled us to manage all election expenditure within allocated budgets

Use of ITES • CEO’s e-mail network was extended to all parallel departments like Police, Excise, Comm Tax, RTO, PWD • Auto CAD, Mapinfo, & Google Pro used to prepare route maps, security forces deployment maps, Counting Hall Layouts etc • Adobe used to design and print ID Cards, Vehicle Permits etc to save costs of printing • Use SMS on CUG for collecting Voting Statistics during polling and counting results by using free SMS websites Way 2 SMS. com • Creation of databases on weapons licenses, Cr. PC cases, vehicles and using the databases for election management • LAN using wireless routers to collect collate and project counting data instantaneously from individual counting rooms • CCTV network with IP Cameras in counting halls to monitor L&O

Conclusions • Innovative practices need to be implemented from the core to periphery • Practices need to be widely acceptable and replicable laterally & vertically - buy in time, rewarding change agents • Innovations should be homeopathic and become a part of the system beyond elections • The Woods should not be missed for the trees and vice versa.

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