Accenture e-Democracy Link Page
formerly 
and
formerly CMIS.
| Address: | 11951 Freedom Dr. |
| City, State, Zip | Reston, VA 20190 |
| Tel: | 1-312-737-8842 |
| Tel-800 | |
| Fax: | |
| Web: | www.accenture.com |
| Contact: | Meg T. McLaughlin (she has now left for greener pastures). |
| Product: | EMS 3.0 |
| Product Review | Click Here to Read Review |
RECENT
NEWS:
Accenture continues
to have trouble in this industry. They most recently lost their
multi-million dollar account for the statewide system in Colorado (Called,
SCORE), and the state of Wyoming (Click
Here to see ). Wisconsin has also announced that they are having trouble with
their system and will not meet the HAVA deadline for statewide VR. Below
is the history of Accenture and their entry into the election business. At
present they only control the following states: Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin. As you will also recall, they lost their contract with the
state of Kansas as well. So, for as large a firm as they are, and with all
their resources, they have only been able to do business with 2 states. Plus the Pennsylvania project was bid and awarded
prior to Accenture's entry into the field. In essence, Wisconsin has been
their only gain in the last 4 years or so. Not very impressive. Be
sure to check the Breaking News
Link for more articles.
QUICK
OVERVIEW:
Accenture got into the voter registration business by buying a firm called
election.com. Election.com's claim to fame was running the first Internet
election. They ran the Democrat primary in Arizona in 2000. Then
the Florida fiasco took place. It was clear to election.com that Internet
voting was dead. So they went on the hunt to buy a standard VR company and
product. They found CMIS of Fayetteville Arkansas. CMIS had
developed a fairly crude product written in Microsoft Access called VEMS.
They had a partnership with Global Elections Systems (now Diebold Election
Systems). Global had a marketing agreement and did a good job of selling
the product. However, it was pretty clear to those counties that CMIS
could not support the product (as it was such a poor product). In short
order, Global divorced themselves from CMIS.
CMIS lost a huge amount of their customer base within 1 to 2 years. They
decided that it would be in their best interest to be purchased by
election.com. Things did not improve with election.com. Counties
still decided to part company. Finally election.com partnered with
Accenture to do the statewide system in Pennsylvania (which is still troubled). They also partnered with Unisys to do the statewide system in
Minnesota. Minnesota, wisely, parted ways with election.com / Unisys and
created their own VR system. Finally it was revealed that election.com was
owned (in part) by Saudi interests. Since they were involved with possible
DOD work, that created issues. It was then that Accenture decided to
purchase election.com. However, they did not retain the election.com
people--opting instead to keep the CMIS people that had created a string of
failed systems across the US.
The reality is that they continue to gain business by
wooing elections officials that apparently don't do reference checks on this
firm, nor do they follow the history of this firm and their involvement in
elections technology. I see that the head of this division, Meg McLaughlin
has finally left. Not much of a track record. I hope your new bosses
in D.C. checked out your track record.
Below were my remarks when it was Election.com (and before that CMIS of Fayetteville, AR).
A
has-been company in the county VR market after losing many of their single
county customers to
a low end
product and very weak technical support. Now pursuing
statewide systems with partners such as Accenture.
A Gordian-knot of company relationships makes for
lack of clear lines of responsibility. A vendor to clearly avoid
with, in our estimation, the worst reputation in the industry. Their
product is a run-time Microsoft Access application
and may not be suitable to large counties or sites with extensive database
requirements. Access is best used for
small applications.
REVIEWS AND NEWS
Date Added
| Voter Registration Backlog Causing Trouble (in PA). From WPSU. Click Here to Read. | 4/06/2008 |
| Article from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Voting System Tallies Trouble". Outlines the ongoing problem with the statewide system. Click here to read. | 3/10/2007 |
| Article from Journal Sentinel on how Accenture's system won't be ready for total use in the fall election. Click to Read. | 08/04/2006 |
| Wisconsin Street Guide (for the Wisconsin statewide system). Note: the screens are not the old CMIS stuff that they mostly peddle. They appear to be finally moving away from the old CMS/election.com product. Click Here to Read. | 5/30/06 |
| Accenture's contract
for VR for Wyoming (Note, it still the old CMIS system in essence.
Check screen shots) Click to Read. For fun, go to the bottom of this table, or Click Here to read the brochure for CMIS's VR system in 1999. Same stuff. |
3/21/2006 |
| New Voting System may miss deadline. Billings Gazette. READ. | 9/25/2005 |
Accenture's
Response to Wisconsin's Kevin Kennedy  |
9/25/2005 |
| Accenture's new "Go Forward" improvement plan for PA. This is familiar ground. Many of the items they claim they will now fix, I reported to them (when they were CMIS and election.com) over 4 years ago!!! Click Here to read. Posted 6/13/2005 | 1. Colorado's SCORE
system. Key Accenture
personnel. 2. SCORE contract (Colorado and Accenture). Read. 3. SCORE contract exhibit A (delivery, etc.). Click to Read. 4. Written response to Vendor's questions. Click Here. 5. SCORE Independent Verification and Validation (from June of 2004). Click to Read. Documents added 8/22/2005 |
| If
you really want to read what's wrong with the Pennsylvania SURE system, be SURE
to read this review of the product by InfoSentry Corp. Click
here to Read. Pay attention to items 30-40. This
is MUST READ. |
Testimony before the House State Gov't Committee, by Doug Hill, Executive Director (County Commissioners Ass'n), March 2005. This provides a good review of the current difficulties with the SURE system. Click Here to Read (.pdf). |
| Accenture e-Democracy Newsletter Oct. 2004 (.pdf format) | Voter Registration Technical Architecture Approach, by Accenture Dec. 2003 (1.8mb pdf file). |
| Accenture e-Democracy Newsletter June 2004 (.pdf format) | Read about problems with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar05/307410.asp |
| Accenture e-Democracy Newsletter Sept. 2003 (.pdf format) | Click Here to Read an article from Oct. 2003 regarding the problems with the statewide VR system in Pennsylvania (SURE). Doesn't sound like it's going to well in PA with Accenture. |
| Wisconsin Democracy Campaign-background on Accenture | Click to Read a CMIS product brochure from around 1999. It mentions such things as automatic pollbook scanning--which they never had at that time. (2mb .pdf file) |
| Read election.com's press release upon the purchase of CMIS and their VEMS VR Product. They clearly tout 170 counties and 2 states. Click Here to View. (from May 2001) |
ELECTION.COM REVIEWS:
Click
Here to Read about election.com's claim to fame: the internet voting for the
Democratic party primary in Arizona.
The
quote from Doug Lewis is here:
"The image is that it was a successful process," said Election
Center director Doug Lewis. "(It was) successful only if you compare it
to nothing. If you compare it to any official election held in the country, it
would have been labeled a disaster."
Franklin County Ohio
CMIS/election.com/Accenture issues and concerns: (note, Franklin
County was the largest county based user of the CMIS/election.com/Accenture
system)
| Franklin County Issues March 2001 (CMIS). Click Here. |
| Franklin Issues early 2001 (CMIS). Click Here. |
| Franklin Outstanding Issues (Aug. 2000 CMIS). Click Here. |
| Memo from Franklin Cty Data Center to election.com on outstanding issues from April 2001. Click Here to read. |
| Franklin County Issues and Perceived Gaps from 2003 |
Below are the VEMS User Group Minutes from the Minn. Sec. of State's web site. Minnesota used the VEMS product on a statewide level when Unisys and election.com partnered up. Accenture purchased election.com but couldn't keep the state together. However, they did hire people from the Minnesota SOS's office--and they still now work for Accenture. Below you will find the User Group meeting notes from MN. They clearly show the problems that this system has or had.