21/09/2023– Situation Report Week 2
As at 12.56pm on 21/09/2023 prepared by Crispian
Distributed All GEDT members
to
Key
Anusha Guler and Crispian
Contacts
Previous
2 ELT Standup SITREPS 2 20092023 - FINAL.docx
ELT SITREP
Overview
Summary of the current event
• Ballot papers were checked and finalised and sent to 6(a) for printing.
• Wild weather over the weekend (16-17/09)
• EasyVote documents being printed
• Special ballot papers completely printed
• Ordinary ballot papers printed.
• At 9:14am at a depth of 11km a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Canterbury
• Annex – Daily progress updates on ballot papers and EasyVote, dashboards
Overseas VS
Security Update:
Operations
• Issues at Gibson Sheat centre
• Front and garage doors were compromised
•
e-learning
• Activity trending down and should continue to do so as mitigations/fixes are put in place.
• Service will be available 0900-1900 Monday to Saturday effective from tomorrow.
• Awaiting Zendesk licences.
• Service is running ok and we are planning to split out the dictation team to ensure this service is not
compromised by the e-learning activity.
• Service status is live and Ok.
Dictation
• 94 Dictation registrations to date.
• All ready to receive dictation votes from 27/09, with dedicated team.
• Service status is live and Ok.
Remote & Postal Voting.
•
Remotes and postal votes requests that have been received over the last few months are being
actioned currently. Overseas Postal votes being loaded into OS app and will be issued and sent
tomorrow.
•
Minor issue with batch printing for Overseas Postal Votes but with a workaround in place won’t cause
any issues.
•
Four remote applications submitted, approved and votes issued to date.
•
Working on Navy and fishing vessel bulk Remote applications currently.
•
Service status is live and OK
Overseas Voter Support.
•
The team has handled about 1500 enquiries since June with over 400 so far this month.
•
Service status is live and Ok.
Overseas Voting Places.
•
Shipment 1 of voting place materials dispatched Friday 8/09/23 to 74 sites. Most have arrived and 9 are
currently awaiting local customs clearance/ DHL are monitoring closely.
•
All diplomatic bags have been cleared, shipment 1 to Sri Lanka was resent Monday 18/09 due to
customs clearance issues in Sri Lanka.
•
Shipment 2, ballot papers, was dispatched Monday 18/09. In transit, no issues so far.
•
Training - Both Personal Instruction Manuals (PIMs), printed copies, have been dispatched and are live
on Tupu. 5 of the 7 OVP training modules are live on Tupu.
•
Managing Overseas Returning Officer (ORO) changes as required, due to original appointed ORO
becoming unavailable.
•
Service status is live and being actively monitored. Tupu modules to be live by end 22/09.
Download Voting Paper (DVP)/Upload Voting Paper (UVP) applications
•
UVP ready to go.
•
DVP waiting for ballot paper load, should be completed today/tomorrow, then will be ready to go.
•
Service status is preparing to go live by end 22/09.
Facility
•
All workstations set up and operational and all equipment and supply items are on site.
•
Security guards are in place.
•
Service status is live and Ok.
Comms
•
Web site is being updated with more information about how to vote from overseas, including specific
details for downloading and marking voting papers on Android / Apple devices.
•
Maintaining Overseas Voting Place (OVP) opening hours etc information as required.
•
Service Status is live and being updated as required.
Staff.
•
Vote receipt team is being put in place with induction and training this week.
•
Lost our 2 Post-election Managers (PEM) so revisiting that currently, interviewing today and tomorrow.
•
Sorting candidates and building vote processing team currently, along with the count team.
•
123 candidates are hired with 40 more being processed currently. A total of 484 applications have been
received.
•
Service status is live and ongoing.
Ballot
UPDATES:
Papers and
Rolls
delivery
6(a)
• We will reinforce the instructions again for the deliveries tomorrow.
Ballot Papers delivery issue updates:
•
6(a)
• The courier issues are now being dealt with at a higher level within both NZ Couriers and Courier Post,
managed directly by the executive manager at the Print companies.
ACTION: Grace Chiang to share NZPost Courier delivery issues with Ross McPherson who will escalate these
with NZPost management.
Roll delivery issue updates:
•
6(a)
Enrolment
GENERAL UPDATE
• No risks or issues to report
•
3,494,376 electors (
90.3% of the eligible population) are now ready to vote, with
74.1% of eligible youth
now enrolled.
• Roll QA checks continue at 6(a)
• Processing of enrolment forms continues. Demand has slowed over the last two or three days.
• Enrolment is now preparing for the Easy Vote Supplementary letters data extract and QA scheduled for
Friday 29 September (see Actions below)
o The data extraction will begin around 7am on Friday 29 September.
o The data being extracted are all enrolment updates and new enrolments processed since the Writ
Day roll close process – likely circa 400,000 records
o The data will be QAd by IT and enrolment staff, following extract
o Sign-off will be required from Director Enrolment, DCE Operations and the Chief Electoral officer
o Activity, including sign-off should be completed around 11am on Friday 29 September, and the data
transferred that afternoon.
eLearning
ISSUES UNDER MANAGEMENT:
issues
The status of this issue has improved over the week – this will be the last day it will be reported to the GEDT.
Numbers of phone calls received by the eLearning helpdesk are trending downwards. They are still
significantly higher than for 2017 and 2020, but staffing of this area has been bolstered and Zendesk licences
to support this have been provided.
Updates:
•
eLearning Tupu Access – Due to reduction in call volumes and potential consequence for field staff
experience a collective decision was taken not to proceed with opening systems access earlier.
•
eLearning Zendesk Licenses – Contract variation approved; licenses available to general enquiries and
being used.
•
eLearning Tupu Database Errors – issues resolved no further calls identified.
IT
ISSUES UNDER MANAGEMENT: •
Field Users Mobile Connectivity - Sites with limited or no connectivity reduced from 81 to 36. After
further investigation only 8 sites have no connectivity. Working with one.nz, Spark and Voting Services
on alternative plans.
•
Interactive Voice Recognition Call Quality Issues – investigation identified 2 specific issues which are
being worked through by the team, further testing taking place at Rongatai this afternoon.
•
Security update patching between now and the election period – Microsoft End User Device patches
progressing well, server patching to complete by end of this week. Android device config update (to stop
any more updates being deployed) has been activated, no issues expected.
•
Key Person risk – Finalising plan and sharing with Key Stakeholders today 21/09
Comms &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Education
Media •
Key themes: Services to Māori voters; tactical voting/wasted votes
•
Chief Advisor, Māori interviewed on Waatea yesterday and on Whakaata Māori today
•
Stories today include article on the Newsroom website by academic Richard Shaw on tactical voting and
in Otago Daily Times highlighting our youngest and oldest voting place employees.
Social Media • More political opinions and voter apathy.
• Planned proactive integrity post on how votes are counted scheduled for tomorrow
Daily key metrics •
5 media enquiries
•
82 enquiries and comments on social media in the past 24 hours
•
26,120 visitors to vote.nz
Customer
GENERAL UPDATE:
Services
• There is a steady volume of enquiries. Since yesterday, the team had 272 tickets created, received 29
phone calls and made 17 outbound calls. 84% of tickets were resolved in one touch. We continued to
receive more enquiries about the EasyVote cards.
• Currently there are 9 complaints on hand across the business units. No major risk or issue arise.
• We continue to be vigilant around any enquiries about Loyal NZ, and make sure these are escalated to
Legal immediately.
Strategic
INSIGHTS (APOLOGY FROM SHANE early departure)
Engagement
• Coming across different pieces of misinformation in the community including you have to pay to enrol, if
and
you didn’t enrol by the 10th of September you can’t vote, and around MEO.
Partnership
• A stop co-governance mail drop has taken place in Auckland which is generating questions and a
prominent location in Whangārei with various political signage has been vandalised with ‘give back our
land’ spray painted across them all.
• An ethnic community in Tāmaki expressed concerns for elders who have limited/no English as previously
their experience in voting places was that if you can’t ask for help in English then none is available to
you.
People &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Culture
• Pre employment checks 997
• Offers out 2148
• Onboarding 1624
• Hired 12847
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
MetService
Forecast for
21 Sep
Severe
Weather
Outlook
On Thursday an active front preceded by a strong northwesterly flow moves north over the lower South
Island. There is then
a high confidence in warning amounts of rain for Fiordland, Westland, and the
headwaters of the Canterbury and Otago lakes and rivers. There is a moderate confidence in warning
amounts of rain for Southland, Clutha and inland Otago. There is a
high confidence in winds reaching severe
gale force about the Southern Alps in Otago and Canterbury and a low confidence in severe gale force
winds for the west of Marlborough and the Marlborough Sounds and also Wellington and the south of
Wairarapa.
On Friday the front is expected to move north over the central and upper South Island. There is then
a high
confidence in warning amounts of rain for Westland and the headwaters of the Canterbury lakes and
rivers. There is a low confidence in warning amounts of snow for the Canterbury high country. There is a low
confidence in severe gale force winds affecting the west of Marlborough, the Marlborough Sounds and also
Wellington and the south of Wairarapa. There is a low confidence in warning amounts of rain for Buller and
the far west of Nelson.
On Saturday the front moves north over the upper South Island and onto the North Island. There is then a
low confidence in warning amounts of rain for Nelson, the west of Marlborough and the Marlborough
Sounds, the Tararua Range, Taranaki, the central North Island high country and the eastern ranges of the Bay
of Plenty.
The front is expected to move away to the east on Sunday but there is still a low confidence that it could
bring warning amounts of rain to the ranges of the eastern Bay of Plenty then.
MetService
Thursday
Extended
North Island: Mostly fine, but the odd shower in the west. South Island: Rain in the west and south with
Forecast 19-
some
heavy falls. Partly cloudy elsewhere from Canterbury northwards. Northwest gales in exposed places.
22 Sep
Friday
North Island: Becoming cloudy with showers for most, but mainly fine in the east. South Island: Rain with
heavy falls spreading north, and gradually easing or clearing in the south. Snow may lower to 500 metres in
Canterbury.
Saturday
North Island: Cloudy with rain for most, some possibly heavy. Strong northerly winds. South Island: Rain with
some heavy falls in the north. Early rain also for Canterbury, with snow likely above 500 metres. isolated
showers in the south, but mainly in Fiordland and Westland.
Chatham Islands
Cloudy periods. A few late showers possible on Saturday and northwesterlies strengthening.
Enrolment Dashboard
Customer Enquiries and Complaints Dashboard
21/09/2023– Situation Report Week 2
As at 4.01pm on 21/09/2023 prepared by Crispian
Distributed All ELT members
to
Key
Anusha Guler and Crispian
Contacts
Previous
2 ELT Standup SITREPS 2 20092023 - FINAL.docx
ELT SITREP
Overview
Summary of the current event
• Ballot papers were checked and finalised and sent to 6(a) for printing.
• Wild weather over the weekend (16-17/09)
• EasyVote documents being printed
• Special ballot papers completely printed
• Ordinary ballot papers printed.
• At 9:14am at a depth of 11km a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Canterbury
• Annex – Daily progress updates on ballot papers and EasyVote, dashboards
Key Dates:
Days to Advance voting 12 days
Days to Election Day 24 days
Overseas VS
GENERAL UPDATES:
Operations
Dictation
• 94 Dictation registrations to date.
• All ready to receive dictation votes from 27/09, with dedicated team.
• Service status is live and Ok.
Remote & Postal Voting
•
Remotes and postal votes requests that have been received over the last few months are being
actioned currently. Overseas Postal votes being loaded into OS app and will be issued and sent
tomorrow.
•
Minor issue with batch printing for Overseas Postal Votes but with a workaround in place won’t cause
any issues.
•
Four remote applications submitted, approved and votes issued to date.
•
Currently working on Navy and fishing vessel bulk Remote applications.
•
Service status is live and OK
Overseas Voter Support
•
The team has handled about 1500 enquiries since June with over 400 so far this month.
•
Service status is live and Ok.
Overseas Voting Places.
•
Shipment 1 of voting place materials dispatched Friday 8/09/23 to 74 sites. Most have arrived and 9 are
currently awaiting local customs clearance/ DHL are monitoring closely.
•
All diplomatic bags have been cleared, shipment 1 to Sri Lanka was resent Monday 18/09 due to
customs clearance issues in Sri Lanka.
•
Shipment 2, ballot papers, was dispatched Monday 18/09. In transit, no issues so far.
•
Training - Both Personal Instruction Manuals (PIMs), printed copies, have been dispatched and are live
on Tupu. 5 of the 7 OVP training modules are live on Tupu.
•
Managing Overseas Returning Officer (ORO) changes as required, due to original appointed ORO
becoming unavailable.
•
Service status is live and being actively monitored. Tupu modules to be live by end 22/09.
Download Voting Paper (DVP)/Upload Voting Paper (UVP) applications
•
UVP ready to go.
•
DVP waiting for ballot paper load, should be completed today/tomorrow, then will be ready to go.
•
Service status is preparing to go live by end 22/09.
Facility
•
All workstations set up and operational and all equipment and supply items are on site.
•
Security guards are in place.
•
Service status is live and Ok.
ISSUES
• Issues at Gibson Sheat centre most likely due to stormy weather
• Front entrance and rear garage doors were compromised – unable to close
• Mitigate issues with additional security guards at entrance and back garage door.
• Front door RESOLVED.
• Rear garage door will be repaired in 2-3 weeks. Security guards are still in place.
Comms
•
Web site is being updated with more information about how to vote from overseas, including specific
details for downloading and marking voting papers on Android / Apple devices.
•
Maintaining Overseas Voting Place (OVP) opening hours etc information as required.
•
Service Status is live and being updated as required.
Staff
•
Vote receipt team is being put in place with induction and training this week.
•
Lost 2 Post-election Managers (PEM), interviewing today and tomorrow.
•
Currently sorting candidates and building vote processing team, along with the count team.
•
123 candidates are hired with 40 more being processed currently. A total of 484 applications have been
received.
•
Service status is live and ongoing.
Voting Place
ISSUE:
-South
Weather Impact
Island
• Staff who are currently in training will have to delay their travel due to the weather and this could lead
to additional cost for accommodation.
error was made in the attempt to correct the situation. Instead, the staff did not correct the error but
generated the wrong letter going to the elector.
• Enrolment can easily correct the record and put the elector onto the Māori roll. However, the rolls have
already been printed.
• This person will have to do a special vote, but the information at VS will have him under the General Roll.
• Enrolment will ring the Māori elector and apologise, as soon as Enrolment have corrected the record.
ACTION:
1. Director of Enrolment will raise the issue with VS to find a solution for this person to vote.
eLearning
ISSUES UNDER MANAGEMENT:
issues
The status of this issue has improved over the week – this will be the last day it will be reported to the GEDT.
Numbers of phone calls received by the eLearning helpdesk are trending downwards. They are still
significantly higher than for 2017 and 2020, but staffing of this area has been bolstered and Zendesk licences
to support this have been provided.
Updates:
•
eLearning Tupu Access – Due to reduction in call volumes and potential consequence for field staff
experience a collective decision was taken not to proceed with opening systems access earlier.
•
eLearning Zendesk Licenses – Contract variation approved; licenses available to general enquiries and
being used.
•
eLearning Tupu Database Errors – issues resolved no further calls identified.
IT
ISSUES UNDER MANAGEMENT: •
Field Users Mobile Connectivity - Sites with limited or no connectivity reduced from 81 to 36. After
further investigation only 8 sites have no connectivity. Working with one.nz, Spark and Voting Services
on alternative plans.
•
Interactive Voice Recognition Call Quality Issues – investigation identified 2 specific issues which are
being worked through by the team, further testing taking place at Rongatai this afternoon.
•
Security update patching between now and the election period – Microsoft End User Device patches
progressing well, server patching to complete by end of this week. Android device config update (to stop
any more updates being deployed) has been activated, no issues expected. 21/09
•
Key Person risk – Finalising plan and sharing with Key Stakeholders today 21/09
Comms &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Education
Media •
Key themes: Services to Māori voters; tactical voting/wasted votes
•
Chief Advisor, Māori interviewed on Waatea yesterday and on Whakaata Māori today
•
Stories today include article on the Newsroom website by academic Richard Shaw on tactical voting and
in Otago Daily Times highlighting our youngest and oldest voting place employees.
Social Media • More political opinions and voter apathy.
• Planned proactive integrity post on how votes are counted scheduled for tomorrow
Daily key metrics •
5 media enquiries
•
82 enquiries and comments on social media in the past 24 hours
•
26,120 visitors to vote.nz
Customer
GENERAL UPDATE:
Services
• Since yesterday, the team had 272 tickets created, received 29 phone calls and made 17 outbound calls.
84% of tickets were resolved in one touch. More enquiries about the EasyVote cards.
• Currently there are 9 complaints on hand across the business units.
• Vigilant around any enquiries about Loyal NZ, and make sure these are escalated to Legal immediately.
Strategic
INSIGHTS
Engagement
• Coming across different pieces of misinformation in the community including payment to enrol, if oneis
and
not enrolled by 10th of September one cannot vote, and around MEO.
Partnership
• A stop co-governance mail drop has taken place in Auckland which is generating questions and a
prominent location in Whangārei with various political signage has been vandalised with ‘give back our
land’ spray painted across them all.
• An ethnic community in Tāmaki expressed concerns for elders who have limited/no English as previously
their experience in voting places was that if you can’t ask for help in English then none is available to
you.
People &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Culture
• Pre employment checks 997
• Offers out 2148
• Onboarding 1624
• Hired 12847
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Severe
Weather
Outlook
On Thursday an active front preceded by a strong northwesterly flow moves north over the lower South
Island. There is then
a high confidence in warning amounts of rain for Fiordland, Westland, and the
headwaters of the Canterbury and Otago lakes and rivers. There is a moderate confidence in warning
amounts of rain for Southland, Clutha and inland Otago. There is a
high confidence in winds reaching severe
gale force about the Southern Alps in Otago and Canterbury and a low confidence in severe gale force
winds for the west of Marlborough and the Marlborough Sounds and also Wellington and the south of
Wairarapa.
On Friday the front is expected to move north over the central and upper South Island. There is then
a high
confidence in warning amounts of rain for Westland and the headwaters of the Canterbury lakes and
rivers. There is a low confidence in warning amounts of snow for the Canterbury high country. There is a low
confidence in severe gale force winds affecting the west of Marlborough, the Marlborough Sounds and also
Wellington and the south of Wairarapa. There is a low confidence in warning amounts of rain for Buller and
the far west of Nelson.
On Saturday the front moves north over the upper South Island and onto the North Island. There is then a
low confidence in warning amounts of rain for Nelson, the west of Marlborough and the Marlborough
Sounds, the Tararua Range, Taranaki, the central North Island high country and the eastern ranges of the Bay
of Plenty.
The front is expected to move away to the east on Sunday but there is still a low confidence that it could
bring warning amounts of rain to the ranges of the eastern Bay of Plenty then.
MetService
Thursday
Extended
North Island: Mostly fine, but the odd shower in the west. South Island: Rain in the west and south with
Forecast 19-
some
heavy falls. Partly cloudy elsewhere from Canterbury northwards. Northwest gales in exposed places.
22 Sep
Friday
North Island: Becoming cloudy with showers for most, but mainly fine in the east. South Island: Rain with
heavy falls spreading north, and gradually easing or clearing in the south. Snow may lower to 500 metres in
Canterbury.
Saturday
North Island: Cloudy with rain for most, some possibly heavy. Strong northerly winds. South Island: Rain with
some heavy falls in the north. Early rain also for Canterbury, with snow likely above 500 metres. isolated
showers in the south, but mainly in Fiordland and Westland.
Chatham Islands
Cloudy periods. A few late showers possible on Saturday and northwesterlies strengthening.
Enrolment Dashboard
Customer Enquiries and Complaints Dashboard
