Electoral management bodies may need to contract other stakeholders or players to provide or to assist in the provision of voting operations, the reasons for this will include:
• necessity (for functions such as security, outside the ambit of electoral functions),
• state policy (for example, employment, computer facilities or capacity building policies)
• a lack of internal capacity and/or expertise
• donor agency stipulations
• or a combination (such as use of state premises for voting sites, use of state production facilities for voting operations materials and equipment).
This may well be a cost-effective means of providing voting operations resources, and make use of otherwise under-utilized resources.
It is essential that electoral management bodies are able to hold these players accountable through service level agreements or bi-lateral agreements between the electoral management body and the state organization. Any perception of bias on the part of the contracted player/s or player/s assisting in the electoral process will result in a severely compromised election.
Government sector bodies
State departments may not be able to meet strict deadlines due to internal bureaucracy, and there is the possibility of political influence in government agencies under direct ministerial control. This requires that care must be taken in defining strict performance and integrity standards through formal contracts with other state agencies rather than informal agreements.
Code of conduct agreements covering secrecy, confidentiality, performance and integrity standards similar to those imposed on the electoral management body's own staff should be implemented.
Given the tendency of bureaucracies to manage by committee, it is wise for the electoral management body to have a significant voice in determining and managing decision-making and coordination structures for voting operations functions undertaken by other state agencies.
It is good practice for the electoral management body to ensure that they have representation on a coordinating body that oversees the work of the government sector body. The selection of the government sector body must be undertaken by the electoral management body taking into account good management practice and objective selection criteria.
Best practice requires that the contracted or seconded government body is accountable to the electoral management body as the overall administrator of the electoral process and the implementer of voting operations.
Private sector organizations
The extent to which specialist or expert private sector contractors are utilized by the electoral management body may be determined by overall government public sector policy and resource base. The electoral management body may have limited input into the contracting of private sector organizations
In many environments there will be private specialist contractors who can perform more cost-effectively some of the non-core voting operations functions listed in The Electoral Management Structure and the Delivery of Voting Operations However, concentrating solely on cost as the predominant factor when determining whether responsibility for certain voting operations functions should be given to private sector contractors can be dangerous.
There are few second chances with voting operations. Bids from private sector organizations to perform voting operations functions need to be rigorously scrutinized to ensure that cost-cutting in pursuit of the contract or to ensure short-term profitability has not damaged reliability, integrity and quality standards. Where private contractors are engaged they should also be bound to the electoral management body's administrative code of conduct.
Private sector organizations can result in higher costs over the long term as they are private entities their continued existence depends upon the amount of money they make and it may not be in their interests to transfer skills to the electoral management body but rather to ensure that their contracts will be renewed at a higher profit.
Good practice requires electoral management bodies to source private sector expertise based on objectively determined selection criteria, such as non-affiliation to a political party, and subject to performance level agreements that will be monitored on an ongoing basis.
Non-governmental organizations
Community organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with their links to and knowledge of grass roots of society are well placed to deliver, or assist in delivering, some voting operations services.
Voter information and education, staff training and observation are areas where NGOs has demonstrable skills and credible track records. These skills should be easily transferable to the voting operations environment.
When involving NGOs, electoral management bodies have to be aware that they, like private contractors, may well operate in an environment with limited accountability, impartiality and probity frameworks of electoral management.
In using NGOs for voting operations functions, their mandates need to be clearly and mutually understood and defined, with accountability and performance frameworks for their operations put in place by the electoral management body.
Adherence to the electoral management body's administrative code of conduct should be mandatory. NGOs may require to be accredited by the electoral management body before undertaking any voting operations’ activities and may need to comply with a code of conduct that regulates their conduct.
Performance Monitoring
Joint electoral management body and NGO initiatives can easily become hampered by widely differing agendas of individual NGOs. It may be more feasible to allow, within strict performance monitoring and evaluation, some flexibility to NGOs in developing their own programmes rather than the electoral management body enforcing a rigid plan.
Care in selection of suitable NGOs for voting operations service delivery is necessary, especially in obtaining evidence of their financial, technical and management capacity, standing within the community and in considering any biases in their past or current activities that may affect perceptions of election integrity. Electoral management bodies are required to ensure that the contracted or seconded NGO has a credible track record in electoral processes and that they proven expertise in the area.
International assistance
The role played by international communities in elections in developing countries or societies that have merged from conflict situations and are experiencing transitional elections, provides an important impetus for electoral democracy. International support in these instances assists in creating professionalism, integrity and effectiveness in election operations.
Good practice requires that international assistance is not periodical and that it provides essential skills transfer to the societies that it assists. Conditional international assistance, where the international organization or community places stringent conditions upon the assisted country, has the potential to create resentment and the withdrawal of co-operation by the host country.
Progressive and effective ways to address this challenge would include the electoral management body ensuring that its role as overall election administrator is clearly understood by the organization or infrastructure providing the international assistance.
International assistance for voting operations could be categorized broadly into three different functions:
• international funding of external technical advice and assistance in voting operations areas where local capacity or expertise is lacking;
• provision of international funding for the acquisition of materials or services (whether internally or externally) that cannot be covered within the available voting operations budgets;
• sourcing of materials or professional services internationally from local funding.
Developing Local Skills
International contributions to voting operations responsibilities are most effectively targeted at raising local capacities for future elections with the objective of lessening, or negating, the need for future assistance rather than providing a short-term solution. Regarding external technical assistance, this can best be expressed as providing experts that mentor, develop and train local staff in relevant fields (such as training, operational, technical, management and ethical aspects of voting operations), rather than using additional international staff to wholly implement election functions.
Wherever possible the emphasis would be better placed on providing international advisers, not implementers or observers.
Ideally such assistance would be provided over the medium or long term, so that the benefits of the international advice and support are effective throughout the electoral process and to allow effective absorption of transferred skills prior to the pressure of an imminent election.
Ensuring Sustainability
International funding for the provision from local sources of voting operations material and services is preferably targeted at sustainable development. Particularly in transitional elections, there can be a tendency towards funding at a level that cannot be sustained locally for future elections, with no guarantee that future international funding at the same level will be available.
This may this distort local economic patterns in the short-term, and may also result in investment in a voting operations base--sophisticated computer systems, transport requirements, materials specifications, use of media--that is not maintainable and sustainable.This will ensure that voting operations processes are continuously dependent on international assistance, unless a redesign exercise cognizant of sustainable local conditions (expensive and perhaps requiring, yet again, international funding) is undertaken.
Avoiding Dependence on Foreign Suppliers
Sourcing of materials externally, even if from local funding, requires careful consideration. Creating dependencies on longer supply lines, and external technical production and maintenance expertise may:
• limit voting operations flexibility;
• require costly contingency measures;
• deny development opportunities within the local economy.
Local solutions involving lower levels of initial technology and expertise provide advantages of control, capacity development, may be more reliable and economical. International sourcing may fill a short-term need, but it can be a very expensive longer-term solution.
