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Rhode Island Casts a Vote for .NET
A short schedule, security concerns, and
tight government budgets drove the state
of Rhode Island to use .NET as part of its
new Web-based campaign reform system.
by Edmund X. DeJesus
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Executive Summary
Company
State of Rhode Island and Quest Information Systems (www.questis.com), contract system developers.
Project
Create a Web-based campaign-finance reporting and monitoring system for the state of Rhode Island, supporting administrators, candidates and their contributors, and the public.
Solution
Use a SQL Server 2000 database to hold financial data and scans of paper forms. Enable secure, browser-agnostic, Web-based public access with a VS.NET application.
Tools
• SQL Server 2000
• Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET)
• Visio 2002 Enterprise
• RoboHelp, eHelp Corp.
• Crystal Reports, Seagate Software
• QACenter Enterprise Edition, Compuware
Challenges
• Satisfy legislated mandates for campaign reform.
• Meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements for Web site navigation. |
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People agree on one political issue almost unanimously: Elections should be fair. No one likes the idea that candidates might be getting money from questionable sources, or from contributors who expect favors in return. As a result, some states, including Rhode Island, have passed laws to enact campaign finance reform. It's a complicated issue because candidates, political parties, contributors, political action committees (PAC), bureaucrats, administrators—and, yes, the voters—all play a part. Quest Information Systems (Indianapolis, Ind.), a software development, integration, and consulting firm, used .NET technology to help Rhode Island's state government cut through the complexity of this issue. Quest created a practical system to facilitate an important aspect of campaign finance reform and one mandated by legislation: making candidates' finance records available to the public. Although politicians, journalists, and the public have demonstrated that they want this access, the question was: How do you efficiently provide it?
This difficult task usually falls to the local Board of Elections. Such agencies typically have a legacy of paper-based processes for tracking campaign finances. The inclination would simply be to record contributions and fund distributions carefully, and make these records available to the public. However, in today's electronic culture, a paper solution doesn't provide the necessary access. Few would be willing to sort through mounds of paper to find the data they need, not to mention travel to the paper records' location—even in everything-is-nearby Rhode Island.
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