Just when Australians were warming to the idea of online voting, the Census disaster has dealt it a massive blow in trust of government internet projects. Picture: David Crosling

Software experts and e-voting supporters have lashed out at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ “incompetence” and say it will cruel future government mass internet projects like online voting.

“In a single fell swoop the appalling incompetence of ABS statisticians has dealt an absolute blow ... to the future of online voting,” David Glance told news.com.au.

Dr Glance, who is director of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Software Practice, said the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), had “not only damaged their own reputation and their ability to convince anyone to take seriously any of their technical claims.

“They have brought into question the ability of any government agency to be able to run technology projects of this scale.

“This has tipped back running elections online into the risks outweighing the benefits.”

David Crowe, political correspondent for The Australian, went further, “Online voting, always a risky prospect, is certainly dead after this affair”.

The Census disaster brings into questions the Government’s ability to run large IT projects like online voting. Picture: Jonathan NgSource:News Corp Australia

While online voting had its supporters in Federal Parliament, including the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Crowe said that the “denial of service” (DDOS) attack which the ABS claimed had breached the site was impossible to prevent.

“If the privacy worries were not enough, the prospect of a DDOS attack on a Federal Election makes online voting a reckless idea at this point,” he said in The Australian.

Phillip Zada of the University of New England’s mobile e-voting research project agreed that the Census fail was a serious setback for convincing the Australian public to vote online.

“Just when people were warming to the idea because of the lengthy time it took to count the votes in the Federal Election, it has taken a step back,” he said.

“One of the key issues is trust and this is going to hit at the bottom line of trust of online voting, fears that anything online is susceptible to this kind of malicious act.

“And that makes it harder for politicians to argue for it.”

Phillip Zada (pictured) has proposed an online voting system for Australia but says it is now on the back foot post Census night. Picture: David SmithSource:News Corp Australia

However both Mr Zada and Dr Glance said there were technological systems to prevent a DDOS attack, which the ABS either couldn’t afford or did not properly employ.

“Online voting systems do cater for this sort of attack,” Mr Zada said.

“You can detect if there’s hundreds of requests coming form one IP address or a hundred thousand, say from Romania.

“There is technology to detect that and so I am wondering whether the ABS had a mix of that kind of attack and just having a system that wasn’t able to cope with the volume of Australians on one night.”
Both Phillip Zada and Dr Glance said they believed the ABS might not have admitted the complete truth about the Census night disaster.

Dr Glance said that the Australian government’s statisticians, in tandem with IBM which was paid $9.6m to build the system for the 2016 Census, had either been incompetent, or had not invested enough in the system.

The long count by the AEC (above) after July’s Federal election boosted support for online voting, but that has received a setback after the Census. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

“The online voting system ... which we presented to the AEC [Australian Electoral Commission] was not meant to replace the current paper based system, but to give an option for people to vote online for seven days prior to polling day,” Mr Zada said.

“It’s something that is going to happen eventually and there are a lot of technological things you can do to stop mass attacks or too many requests on the system at once.

“With [Census night] it’s probably a mix of both. The ABS ... need to learn from it, mitigate the risks and move forward.”
Dr Glance said that government statisticians and IT workers “of limited capacity” had worked with IBM to produce the online Census system.

“It’s impossible to know whether IBM suggested the additional security measures necessary and the ABS just did not take them up on it, or whether it was a shared incompetence,” he said.

“If everyone goes online at 7.30pm, why didn’t they have the architecture to cope with it?

“They were adamant and rigid about how they set up their machines.

“If they wanted to do this properly, why didn’t they go to Google, or Facebook or Yahoo, or someone who can cope with this type of IT project?

“They managed to block three attacks, if they wanted to block [the forth attack] they could have done one simple thing — blocked all traffic from outside Australia,

“Given how badly [the Census project] was managed and the lack of communication by the ABS, would the AEC manage this better with online voting?
“Probably not.”

Dr Glance said the ABS had “proved that its ability to communicate with the Australian public in an effective way has been as deficient as its technology”.

“There is also a clear question as to whether the entire census will need to be rerun as it has already been severely compromised,” he said.

“Would anyone actually still trust the results that come from the census as it has been run so far?”