Electoral Services - data processing
Centralised data processing creates exponential benefit across the organisation.
In the past 18 months, the Digital Customer Programme have undertaken several important pieces of work for the Electoral Services department that have assisted in ensuring that the Electoral Registration Officer publishes a complete and accurate electoral register.
Key project details
1,000s of potential electors identified
Comparing records
Analysis for Electoral Services includes:
- A significant cleansing of student electoral registration data received from the University of Sussex and Brighton University.
- Analysing registered electors who have email addresses held by other Council departments and producing reports allowing this information to be uploaded into the Electoral Services’ database.
- Producing regular reports highlighting residents appearing on other Council datasets who do not appear to be registered to vote currently.
- Providing cleansed cuts of Council datasets to allow data-matching to take place prior to the reformed annual canvass.
Publishing a complete and accurate Electoral Register is central to underpinning the democratic mandate of the Council and ensures that residents in the City are provided with the opportunity to take part in elections at local, regional and national levels.
These digital projects have directly led to additional electors being registered to vote and ensured that the Brighton & Hove Electoral Register is more comprehensive than previous years. Moreover, by supplying email address data, the Electoral Registration Officer and Returning Officer can now contact electors through paper and/or digital means, which help to ensure electors are made aware of upcoming audits of the Electoral Register, when elections are taking place and where their polling station is.
Michael Appleford, Electoral Services