CURRENT DAY GIS AT THE IEC

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1 CURRENT DAY GIS AT THE IEC du Plessis, M. Independent Electoral Commission (South Africa). ABSTRACT The Constitution Stipulates that all elections in the country (i.e. national, provincial and municipal) must be based on a national common voters roll. In order to practically achieve this, the eligible voting electorate had to be located (or placed) geographically so that a person s name can only appear once on the voters roll. The electoral act therefore provides for the creation of voting districts where one voting district has one voting station and represents one segment of the national voters roll. Voting districts were also designed to be administrative and not political groupings. Geographic information systems (GIS) technology was identified as an appropriate tool for this process and the primary responsibility of the GIS department at the IEC is to spatially maintain, enhance and ensure integrity of the voting districts and associated voting stations on behalf of the Delimitation and Registration departments. Supporting data sets are also included in the spatial database and the GIS department is continually seeking ways to supplement and enhance such data sets. In addition to being the spatial data custodian, GIS is also providing reports and analysis pertinent to delimitation and registration to assist the user departments on a functional level to evaluate and improve the delimitation and hence the quality of the voters roll. As a secondary responsibility, the GIS department provides spatial management reporting maps to assist the other IEC departments in performing election planning, logistics planning and monitoring, registration reporting, results etc. In addition to the maps produced for the IEC, a publication was done in The Atlas of Results, which is a prime example of spatial management reporting, was produced subsequent to the 1999 Elections. The Atlas contains a number of map themes which graphically indicate not only population distribution, registration patterns, leading party by voting district (Figure 1), voter turnout, and spoilt votes, but also individual party support and lead/lag indications. This publication was used by many political parties in their planning for Municipal elections The successful implementation of GIS at the IEC can be attributed to a creative combination of a clear vision, leading edge technology, the best data available at any given time and dedicated teams who were able to perform under severe time pressure. 1. INTRODUCTION The Constitution stipulates that all elections in the country (i.e. national, provincial and municipal) must be based on a national common voters roll. In order to achieve this, the eligible voting electorate had to be located (or placed) geographically so that a person s name can only appear once on the voters roll. The electoral act therefore provides for the creation of voting districts where one voting district has one voting station and represents one segment of the national voters roll. Voting districts were also designed to be administrative and not political groupings. Geographic information systems (GIS) technology was identified as an appropriate tool for this process and the primary responsibility of the GIS department at the IEC is to spatially maintain, enhance and ensure integrity of the voting districts and associated voting stations on behalf of the Delimitation and Registration departments. Supporting data sets are also included in the spatial database and the GIS department is continually seeking ways to supplement and enhance such data sets. In addition to being the spatial data custodian, GIS is also providing reports and analysis pertinent to delimitation and registration to assist the user departments on a functional level to evaluate and improve the delimitation and hence the quality of the voters roll. As a secondary responsibility, the GIS department provides spatial management reporting maps to assist the other IEC departments in performing election planning, logistics planning and monitoring, registration reporting, results etc. In addition to the maps produced for the IEC, a publication was done in The Atlas of Results, which is a prime example of spatial management reporting, was produced subsequent to the 1999 Elections. The Atlas contains a number of map themes which graphically indicate not only population distribution, registration patterns, leading party by voting district (Figure 1), voter turnout, and spoilt votes, but also individual party support and lead/lag indications. This publication was used by many political parties in their planning for Municipal Elections Proceedings of the 21 st International Cartographic Conference (ICC) Durban, South Africa, August 2003 Cartographic Renaissance Hosted by The International Cartographic Association (ICA) ISBN: Produced by: Document Transformation Technologies

2. BACKGROUND (ELECTIONS 1999) In February 1997, the IEC initiated a process to create a continuous spatial database for the entire country in conjunction with the Department of Land Affairs and

2 2. BACKGROUND (ELECTIONS 1999) In February 1997, the IEC initiated a process to create a continuous spatial database for the entire country in conjunction with the Department of Land Affairs and Statistics SA. In June 1997, the various project teams commenced the collection, creation, assimilation and quality checking of the geographic data sets with respect to:! topographical data (1: map series with road, rivers, contours etc.);! rural and urban cadastral data (e.g. erven, farm boundaries, etc.), approximately 7 million land parcels; and! census enumerator areas, approximately units. Final delivery to the IEC of the first continuous geographical data set for the country took place a year later in early June A miracle indeed! While monitoring and co-ordinating the efforts of the project teams, the IEC at the same time developed an automated GIS software application for the electronic and geographic delimitation of the country into a number of voting districts, using enumerator areas and their population statistics as building blocks. Voting districts had to be created in accordance with a number of pre-set rules, for example: a) In urban areas, approximately 3000 voting age persons were grouped within a 7.5 km travel distance from a voting station. b) In rural areas, approximately 1200 voting age persons were grouped within a 10 km travel distance from a voting station. c) Delimitation was performed randomly and statistically, starting delimitation alternately from North, South, West and East in the municipality. d) Voting districts had to be as square as possible to ensure that a voting station in the centre of the voting district would be equally accessible to all voters. e) Railways, major roads, rivers, etc should not cut voting districts. Figure 1. Leading party by voting district national election.

The IEC project to determine the boundaries of voting districts commenced in early June 1998 and in the ensuing 4 months, 14 650 voting districts with voting stations were established.

At local level, the voting district boundaries were verified and a voting station identified for each.

district (Figure 2) before the first general registration weekend could commence in November 1998.

3 The IEC project to determine the boundaries of voting districts commenced in early June 1998 and in the ensuing 4 months, voting districts with voting stations were established. Once the voting districts were electronically determined and checked, maps were produced and sent to each of the then 807 municipalities. At local level, the voting district boundaries were verified and a voting station identified for each. Maps were returned to the Delimitation department for final verification and then handed over to the GIS department to spatially affect the changes and produce a bar-coded map for each voting district (Figure 2) before the first general registration weekend could commence in November Registration is done using a scanner device (called zip-zip) to first record the barcode on the voting district map and then the bar-coded identity number of each person applying for registration. In this way, voters are automatically associated with the correct voting district and thus the segment of the voters roll where their names will appear. In many respects, we sailed into uncharted territory at the commencement of the project not knowing the extent of the task and operating in a complex environment. We faced the challenges of working with nine very large spatial untested and untried databases (one per province), spatial data that had to be changed, a very new and still untested GIS package, and newly installed high-end IT infrastructure. At the height of the process approximately 100 GIS staff worked in shifts around the clock to complete the process. The team produced approximately original maps and 1,1 million copies in the build-up to the 1999 elections. Figure 2. Bar-coded voting district map. 2.1 Interesting statistics Elections 99 At the time, the IEC probably had one of the largest and most complex GIS sites in the country! Infrastructure: Nine (9) A0 HP 2500 plotters, four (4) high volume Canon copiers for the A3 colour printing, highend workstations (256 MB RAM, MHz PII processors and 9GB hard disks), a high speed Ethernet network (100 MB per second) and powerful servers (512MB RAM, 4 X 200MHz Pentium pro processors and 270 GB hard disk).! Personnel: Approximately 100 staff members (including temporary staff)! GIS Software: Autodesk World 2 (high volume map production) and Maptitude (management reporting)! Database information: The infrastructure enabled us to handle approximately 200 gigabytes of geographical information linked to an SQL database containing information about the enumerator areas and voting districts.! Map production: original maps and 1,1 million copies During the peak of the map production, an internal record of 47 million transactions was recorded in a 24 hour period.

3. MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 2000 Subsequent to the 1999 Elections, the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) was established and tasked with redefining municipal boundaries and establishing wards for the

4 3. MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 2000 Subsequent to the 1999 Elections, the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) was established and tasked with redefining municipal boundaries and establishing wards for the municipal elections. In defining these boundaries, the MDB considered a number of factors such as population density, number of registered voters, keeping communities together as far as possible and also attempted to use voting districts and/or census enumerator areas as building blocks. However, approximately 4000 voting district boundaries were bisected by municipal or ward boundaries and had to be redelimited. In total, 27 versions of boundary data sets (first municipalities and then wards) were received from the MDB between February and October 2000 each and every one undergoing extensive quality checks. During the quality assurance processes the spatial integrity of features were checked (overshoots, alignments, slivers etc.) as well as the implementation of the demarcation business rules. Both MDB and the IEC were operating under severe time constraints to have the municipalities, wards and voting district units ready for the 5 December 2000 elections. Once the changes to voting districts were affected, maps were produced to assist with targeted registration (i.e. assigning voters to the correct segments of the voters roll) and also the required A3 maps for general registration voting districts after the re-delimitation and demarcation processes. While the data editing and re-delimitation processes were very complex, the production of maps was greatly simplified in February Up until then, GIS packages traditionally used propriety databases, but with the advent of Oracle 8i (spatial) the situation changed. After conducting a number of tests with different packages using the Oracle 8i database, we took a leap of faith and changed the GIS platform. The custom map applications were converted, and it became evident that the new platform was performing even better than anticipated and that the databases were remarkably stable. As a result, the map production team was substantially reduced with no need to have shifts, and a complete set of voting district maps could be produced within 10 days as opposed to 6 weeks previously. Fewer software licenses were required and added to the cost savings attained by the change in the environment. A web-based GIS application was built to provide a facility on the IEC web-site where voters could verify where they needed to register/vote. The same application was adapted for use in a call centre where voters could establish their voting station address telephonically. However, this facility was mainly applicable to urban voters where detailed address information was available. Spatial management reports were provided to the organisation in the build-up to municipal elections 2000 as well as during the results verification processes. Figure 3 provides an example of the registration pattern ahead of the municipal elections. Figure 3. Voter registration by municipality - Municipal elections 2000.

5 3.1 Interesting statistics Municipal elections 2000! Infrastructure: Six (6) A0 HP 1055 plotters, one (1) HP 50 inch wide plotter, four (4) high volume Canon copiers for the A3 colour printing, high-end workstations (256 MB RAM, MHz PII processors and 9GB hard disks), a high speed Ethernet network (100 MB per second) and powerful servers (512MB RAM, 4 X 200MHz Pentium pro processors and 270 GB hard disk).! Personnel: Approximately 30 staff members (including temporary staff).! GIS Software: MapInfo (high volume map production), GeoMedia Pro (Spatial Editing), Maptitude (management reporting), MapXtreme/MapXtend (web services) and ER Mapper & Image server (image processing).! Database information: The geographical information was ported to Oracle 8i (100GB), which resulted in a significant reduction from the previous election. The alphanumeric information resided in SQL server! Map production: original maps and copies 4. BEYOND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 2000 Having finalised the municipal elections successfully, the IEC, for the first time since its inception in 1997, was not faced with an imminent election and the time constraints surrounding it. This presented an opportunity for the GIS department to properly examine the entire spatial environment and identify and implement a number of projects to enhance the quality of data and efficiency of execution. The following data projects were done: 4.1 GPS voting stations During the municipal elections, it became evident that the positions (on a map) of the voting stations inside voting districts were not always accurate. During the first delimitation process (1998), voting station information was indicated on the maps by the local electoral officers. However, due to a lack of sufficient backdrop information and inaccurate reading of maps, voting stations were in some cases placed inside the incorrect geographic area (i.e. voting districts). In order to accurately record all the voting station positions, global positioning satellite (GPS) technology seemed to provide a solution since restrictions on the accuracy on GPS data had been eliminated around that time. In conjunction with a third party, the IEC developed an application for a handheld GPS device (Husky) with a Microsoft CE operating system. Using this application, a person visiting a voting station could see a map on the screen of the surrounding voting district and record the location as well as other pertinent information to the voting station. Field teams recorded the voting station data over a period of four months. The GPS data was transferred to head office through the IEC wide area network and processed by the GIS department. In order to maintain the stability of the voting station locations, the process of adding new voting stations has been adapted to include compulsory GPS readings. 4.2 National address dictionary The link between a land parcel (i.e. erf / stand) and a street address has been elusive for many years. On the registration application, a voter indicates a physical address and although the voters roll does not require addresses, the information is captured. The challenge is then to relate the address to the correct entity on the spatial database, which will show exactly where the registered voter lives. A partial solution to the problem was to procure available commercial data sets (focussed primarily on the larger formal urban areas). Using the procured data sets as a base, municipalities (local government, the GIS community and town planners) were contacted and spatially referenced address data was made available to the IEC for electoral purposes which increased the number of links between street addresses and the formal cadastral data set to just over 50%. However, this address dictionary made no provision for the rural areas where no cadastre has been mapped and no formal addresses exist. Using a combination of address matching software and GIS tools, the IEC further enhanced its geo-referenced database by using the addresses provided by the voters and matching it, in rural areas, to a village level. This technique proved to be sufficiently accurate to deliver the same standard of results, as compared to the urban areas, where the villages are contained within a single voting district. The NAD is a work in progress, but it adds enormous value in determining where voters physically registered and therefore aids in the continuous evaluation of voting districts and stations. 4.3 Other spatial data sets In addition to the work on the location of voting stations and the IEC national address dictionary, imagery and updated versions of existing data sets have been included into the spatial database (e.g. cadastral and topographic data, enumerator areas etc.). A project was initiated to determine settlement patterns in rural areas by using aerial photography and placing a dot on each visible household structure in the GIS. The resulting dot pattern gives an indication of the population density and distribution in any given voting district and also assists in the evaluation of voting districts and stations.

6 5. PREPARING FOR 2004 The first general registration weekend for Election 2004 will in all likelihood be held in November 2003 and a number of projects have already started in support thereof. 5.1 Delimitation revision Using the data sets described above to enhance the voting district data, working maps have been produced to facilitate the current delimitation revision process. For example, in an urban area where NAD data is available, the voter registration pattern will be indicated by a unique colour for each voting district number and then putting a corresponding colour dot on the map for each (matched) registration against the voting district. Should voters have registered outside the boundaries of the voting district, this will become evident on the map. In some areas, aerial photographs and other images are included on the maps to provide the best possible context for the local officers to evaluate the validity of voting districts. 5.2 Spatial management reporting With preparations for the 2004 elections in progress, the need for spatial management reporting maps becomes much more pronounced. For example, maps have been produced to track the progress of the various stages of the delimitation revision process, the appointment of electoral staff, the distribution of registration material and in the planning of the upcoming registration initiatives. These maps enable managers to pinpoint problematic areas or specific patterns visually and immediately without having to go through detailed reports. In addition to hardcopy maps, GIS information is also disseminated to head office and provincial users on the IEC intranet. Spatial management reports can be viewed and users are able to select not only the report themes, but also the geographic units on which the reporting should be done (e.g. provincial, municipal, voting district etc.). Multiple reports (up to four) may also be selected for the same area if comparisons are required. For example, the population density and registration figures for a particular ward can be viewed simultaneously to identify areas to be targeted for further registration drives. 5.3 Current Architecture Figure 4 provides a schematic of the current GIS software and hardware architecture. Oracle 9i is used for the spatial data while all the alphanumeric data of the IEC resides in SQL Server Different GIS packages are used for map production, data editing, image manipulation, linking to handheld applications and web interfaces. Having changed the GIS platform in 2000, continual improvements have been made to the custom applications and database structures to enhance the performance capacity. For example:! Custom map production applications have been optimised and combined into a single easy to use interface.! Imagery has been compressed, using ER Mapper. This had the advantage of limiting the amount of hard drive space required and improved the map production rate.! Archiving election maps in a *.pdf format, instead of *.prn. This had the advantage of limiting the amount of hard drive space required and increasing print processing speed. 5.4 Interesting statistics Current environment! Infrastructure: Five (5) A0 HP 5500 PS plotters, one (1) HP 60 inch wide plotter, three (3) high volume Canon copiers for the A3 colour printing, high-end workstations (512 MB RAM, 2.8 GHz P4 Dual processors and 40GB hard disks), a high speed network (a gigabyte backbone:10/100/1000 NIC) and powerful servers (4 GB RAM, 4 X GHz Pentium pro processors and 270 GB hard disk).! Personnel: Approximately 20 staff members (including temporary staff).! GIS Software: MapInfo (high volume map production), ArcEdit 8.3 (Spatial Editing), Maptitude (management reporting), MapXtreme/MapXtend (web services), ER Mapper & Image server (image processing) and Intiendo (address matching software).! Database information: The geographical information was ported to Oracle 9i (100GB), while the GIS standard was changed to WGS84. The raster information is still in a compressed file format (100 GB) and the alphanumeric information resides in SQL server 2000.! Map production (Estimated): original maps and copies.

7 imac imac imac imac A GIS perspective of the IEC architecture 2003 External web users (Public) Organization intranet users (Head Office) Handheld users (GPS) A0 & 60 inch Plotters; A3 High volume printers GIS Power users (QA) GIS users (local - map production) High volume Map production print server GIS Portal (PC -MapInfo Pro 7, Maptitude 4.6; ArcEdit 8.3; GeoMedia 4; Web-based- MapXtreme NT, MapXtreme Java, MapXtend; Application interface- Mappear Web server Corporate database Fire wall Alphanumeric database server farm Scaled-down database Intranet GIS web server GIS Spatialand raster data server IT Architecture, Policies, Processes and Standards Figure 4. Current GIS architecture in the broader IT environment. 6. CONCLUSION The successful implementation of GIS at the IEC can be attributed to a creative combination of a clear vision, leading edge technology, the best data available at any given time and dedicated teams who were able to perform under severe time pressure. Since 1998, when the IEC set up its GIS department, the overall operational costs have declined steadily due to improved software, optimization of the environment (applications and infrastructure) and the subsequent reduction of manpower requirements. In other words, we were able to accomplish more in a shorter time frame. Being involved in GIS at the IEC has been an adventure with many challenges and great rewards. However, as long as there are still unregistered voters and untapped data out there, the job will not be complete and new challenges will arise from every new set of elections.

CENSUS MAPPING WITH GIS IN NAMIBIA. BY Mrs. Ottilie Mwazi Central Bureau of Statistics Tel: October 2007

CENSUS MAPPING WITH GIS IN NAMIBIA BY Mrs. Ottilie Mwazi Central Bureau of Statistics E-mail: omwazi@npc.gov.na Tel: + 264 61 283 4060 October 2007 Content of Presentation HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CENSUS