Community Outreach
From OSDVwiki
[edit] Welcome!
Next to crafting technology solutions for voting, the most important thing we need to do is make sure we're not the best kept secret in the world. That's where community outreach comes into play. And if you're reading this, then perhaps this is an area where you can contribute.
Its fair to say that "outreach" includes public relations and to a certain extent, government relations. That noted, let's be clear about what the latter means to us, and perhaps that's best handled by starting with what it is not.
Government relations is not about lobbying, engaging in public policy debates, advocating for candidates or legislation, or anything of a political nature. "OK," you ask, "What's left?" Well, it turns out that it is nearly as imperative that we reach out to Government officials as much as the general public for several reasons. Here are a couple of them:
1. Engaging Election Administrations. This starts with State Secretaries and proceeds out to precinct administrators. The need should be obvious: without their input and interest our work will go largely unnoticed. And announcements of the same will be met with the sound of crickets chirping in the night.
2. Informing Elected Officials. Similarly, we need to reach out to elected officials who are charged with various Congressional roles at state and Federal levels for aspects of election administration. They can help direct us to Agencies and Administrators who need to be aware of us and who may have authority over inspecting and certifying our works as meeting their minimum guidelines employed for commercial products (although the OSDV Foundation work will be non-commercial open source).
3. Working with Government Agencies. And likewise, we need to be in contact with and following the procedures of authorities such as the EAC (Elections Assistance Commission) and NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology) which is actively engaged on this topic.
We'll add much more about Outreach programs and how you can help shortly.
