Operating Context

Our environment

Our operating environment has never been more complex and fluid, and we are experiencing an unprecedented number of operational challenges.

Local and world events, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, have significantly changed our operating environment. Never before has there been more urgency for an agile response to delivering electoral events and maintaining electoral integrity. To remain agile, our commitment to ongoing improvement and innovation continues, to meet both the immediate needs of event delivery and longer-term community expectations through current and future electoral cycles.

The Australian electoral system presents a number of unique challenges. With no fixed date for federal elections, we must always be ready to deliver an electoral event at any point in the electoral cycle. We do this through effective election planning and balancing the appropriate level of election readiness with risks and cost.

For example, to successfully deliver an electoral event during a one-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, event planning must be quickly adjusted to ensure voting services are delivered in line with health guidelines and restrictions. We must also respond with agility to other emergency events such as bushfires, which can impact the delivery of enrolment and voter services.

The rapidly evolving and increasingly uncertain environment brings more complexity to election readiness and delivery. For the AEC, this presents a number of ongoing challenges. The increasing trend in pre-poll voting, and the ongoing demand for more accessible and convenient voting options, require considerable preparations and planning.

The AEC already goes above and beyond to provide early, postal, inter-division and interstate, mobile and overseas voting options and services. We must do this within the remit of our legislation which offers both opportunities and challenges for the way we conduct our business into the future.

The highly prescriptive process for conducting elections outlined in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Electoral Act) must be balanced with evolving technological, demographic and stakeholder demands for error free, transparent, modern and efficient electoral events. Increased scale, changing voter expectations, 24-hour social media commentary, security concerns—and now a global pandemic—are some of the factors adding further difficulty to an evolving electoral environment. The AEC’s regulatory role must also mature to keep pace with these changes.

We must remain vigilant about physical and online security as well as information privacy. We continue to acknowledge and manage the changing cyber security environment, and the ever-increasing threat of disinformation. To do this we need to seize opportunities to incorporate technological solutions to deliver more efficient electoral events, refine internal processes, and train and support our staff.

Despite these challenges, the AEC administers an electoral system that successfully maintains a very high level of electoral participation. We recognise and are focused on some parts of the community that face challenges in fully participating in elections. We must continue to develop community engagement resources, using targeted, evidence-based and multi-pronged approaches to identify and engage these groups and increase electoral participation for all Australians.

To solve these many complex and unfolding problems, we work with new and existing stakeholders—and broaden our engagement—to deliver innovative solutions. Through the four key activities in this plan, the AEC strategically and methodically builds our capability, manages our risk and collaborates with others, to deliver electoral events and services to the Australian community.

Our risk oversight and management

With COVID-19 impacting all aspects of our operations, we must adapt and respond to manage our risks effectively.

It is crucial that we meet Australian Government and community expectations to provide a safe environment for the public to enrol and vote, and to stay informed and educated about our electoral system.

Our risk management framework

The AEC’s commitment to maturing our risk management framework and strengthening organisational capability continues. We will:

• legitimise risk taking within our appetite
• strengthen strategic alignment and risk communication
• promote learning opportunities that reinforce positive risk behaviour
• share good practice and better integrate risks with lessons learnt
• bolster collaboration in managing shared risks
• embed enterprise risk management to improve the quality of risk assessments and reporting

An important component of our risk management framework is our risk management policy, which applies to all aspects of AEC operations. This policy defines:

• the AEC’s approach to managing risk, and how this supports the agency’s objective and directions
• the principles of the agency’s risk appetite and risk tolerance
• key accountabilities and responsibilities for managing and implementing the risk framework

Our risk appetite statement confirms that the AEC accepts medium and low levels of risk, and prefers not to accept high or extreme risks. The following table lists our strategic and enterprise risks, their impacts and mitigation strategies.

Managing our strategic and enterprise risks

Our capability

In an increasingly complex operating environment, we continue to build our organisational capability by refining and modernising the way we do business and adapting to change.

We are focused on modernising our processes, delivery model, IT systems, and approach to workforce management, while further maturing our regulatory capability. We do this through learning lessons, regularly refining our business model and systems and innovating and investing in effective change that enhances our agency capability and our service offering.

Guided by the AEC’s values of electoral integrity through quality, agility and professionalism, we can adapt swiftly to change, and identify innovative solutions to meet our challenges. To operate effectively despite uncertainty, we must have the required underlying organisational capability that delivers our normal daily activities but also enables us to meet our future requirements and those of our stakeholders.

Our people capability

With a network of APS staff across Australia—and a temporary election workforce of over 87,000 at a federal election—the AEC’s people are critical to delivering our purpose.

Strategic workforce planning

Our strategic workforce planning aims to build organisational capability by supporting talent management and succession planning over the employee lifecycle. With a focus on further professionalising the AEC workforce, our strategic workforce planning focuses on attracting, developing and retaining a professional, responsive and agile workforce, and driving a positive and healthy workplace culture that delivers high performance.

Our continued commitment to driving and promoting diversity and inclusion–and removing barriers to inclusion–is outlined in the AEC’s Diversity Inclusion Strategy 2019–2022. The AEC’s ongoing commitment to improving outcomes for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is outlined in the AEC’s Reconciliation Action Plan 2020–21. It includes the actions we are taking and the targets we have set to improve opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff. Both documents help build diversity and inclusion in our workforce, and–in turn–improve our services to all Australians.

Learning and professional development

The AEC’s Learning and Professional Development Strategy 2020–2025 builds on our considerable investment in professionalising our workforce, and positions the AEC to meet current and future requirements. It guides our commitment to being a learning organisation, aims to increase organisational capability, and provides clear development pathways to foster continuous improvement and innovation.

Our IT capability

IT systems

Providing resilient, modern and secure systems is critical to delivering electoral events. Our core election and enrolment systems continue to age, and are costly to maintain. To better respond to contemporary election and security risks—as well as global and economic challenges—we must improve practices and create process efficiencies by building our IT capability.

Guided by our ICT Strategic Plan 2018–2022, we are working to modernise our core election and enrolment systems to ensure they:

• are agile and adaptable
• use a single modern platform
• are fully integrated, sustainable and user-intuitive

The ICT plan aligns our technology capability with our long-term business strategy. It focuses on system security, modernisation and more effective use of internal data to inform business decisions. A modern electoral management system and infrastructure will improve the AEC’s capability to deal with security risks, and to enhance our ability to detect, prevent and respond to external interference in elections.

The AEC will continue to build on the business case and baseline work to modernise our core election and enrolment systems.

Cyber security

The AEC is fully committed to managing its cyber security program and the threat of cyber-attacks. We partner with Australian Government security and intelligence agencies to maintain compliance with security standards and to ensure better understanding of the cyber security threat environment. We cooperate with electoral management bodies around the world and the Electoral Council of Australia and New Zealand, undertake cyber security training, and work to mitigate the risk of cyber security incidents.

Our cooperation

The AEC continues to broaden cooperation with others to ensure we can continue to deliver effective and secure elections into the future, and within a rapidly changing environment.

The AEC cooperates with organisations and stakeholders—new and existing—to draw on available and appropriate resources, support and advice. A broad range of government agencies and organisations, and commercial and industry partners, work with the AEC to deliver electoral events through service provision and strategic partnerships. The AEC also provides support to others.

Delivering electoral events

A federal election is perhaps the biggest peacetime logistical event in Australia, and the scale and complexity of the task is growing. To deliver what are often logistically complex voting options, the AEC has key partnerships and collaborations with Commonwealth agencies and state, territory and local government jurisdictions. For example:

• the Australian Taxation Office and state and territory agencies work together and share data to improve the quality of the electoral roll
• Australian Bureau of Statistics population data informs redistribution activities
• Services Australia provides call centre services and helps with remote mobile polling
• the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is integral to our delivery of electoral events to Australians around the world
• suspected breaches of criminal offences in the Commonwealth Electoral Act are referred to the Australian Federal Police for assessment and investigation
• the AEC co-chairs the Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force which consists of a number of Commonwealth government agencies—including the Australian intelligence community—to help detect and prevent interference in the election

The AEC works with state and territory electoral commissions and other key stakeholders to support all Australians’ electoral participation, including voters from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, Indigenous Australians, people with disability, homeless people and youth. This includes working in partnership with community organisations, Commonwealth, state and local government entities, and other service providers to implement and promote pilot initiatives and programs, distribute electoral information, increase awareness and education on electoral processes, and promote recruitment opportunities. The AEC collaborates with the disability sector by chairing the Disability Advisory Committee which promotes greater accessibility, inclusion and participation in the electoral process by people with disability.

Our important work continues through challenges such as COVID-19 and other emergencies including bushfires. During these times, consultation with senior medical officials, health authorities, relevant recovery and resilience focused agencies and taskforces, state police and education departments has increased, and will continue to do so as the AEC prepares to deliver electoral events during a pandemic.

Our liaison with industry experts and commercial partners and suppliers ensures a seamless and nationally-coordinated approach to supply chain and logistics. This allows the AEC to deliver the appropriate number of ballot papers and materials to provide a seamless and consistent voter experience. Our long standing commercial relationship with Australia Post ensures we can provide a range of postal and enrolment services.

Strategic partnerships

The AEC works closely with many Commonwealth and state government agencies and other key stakeholders, such as social media companies, to protect Australia’s electoral integrity and to share knowledge.

To mitigate threats to electoral integrity from malicious cyber activity, physical means, foreign interference or disinformation, we engage with partner security agencies, including the Australian Cyber Security Centre. These relationships ensure we are ready to re-establish the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce to help safeguard against interference that may impact on the integrity of electoral events. Agencies represented on the taskforce have vast and varied expertise and capability, and support the AEC through the delivery phase of elections to reduce the risk of interference. Agencies represented on the Taskforce include:

• Australian Electoral Commission
• Department of Finance
• Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
• Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications
• Attorney-General’s Department
• Department of Home Affairs
• Australian Federal Police

The Taskforce is also supported, as needed, by the national intelligence community.

To further understand and monitor the electoral environment in Australia and internationally, we engage and collaborate with other electoral management bodies, such as the Electoral Council of Australia and New Zealand. This enhances a shared understanding of the broader electoral environment to compare legislative frameworks and services, and to learn through the experiences of other agencies. For example, overseas electoral commissions such as Elections Canada and the UK Electoral Commission, are interested in running similar activities to the AEC’s Stop and Consider campaign which helps voters avoid being misled by disinformation.

The AEC also undertakes strategic engagement with developing countries and emerging democracies on electoral administration. This is achieved through collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in-line with the Australian Government’s national and foreign policy interests.

The AEC also works very closely with the Department of Finance to help inform electoral policy and legislative reform, and to shape the future electoral operating environment. Much of this is informed by our engagement with other electoral management bodies from around Australia and overseas. This information and experience is also used to inform our submissions and advice to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

Supporting others

The AEC supports state, territory and local government elections and by-elections by managing the Commonwealth Electoral Roll, and through joint-roll arrangements. The AEC also conducts industrial elections and ballots under the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009.

The AEC provides support for international electoral management bodies in close cooperation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Through a range of bilateral and multilateral programs, the AEC is engaged throughout the Indo-Pacific region to deliver capacity building and support for electoral administrators.

The AEC provides a Secretariat for the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand Electoral Administrators (PIANZEA) Network, which has facilitated the delivery of programs and resources for over 20 years to strengthen the capacity and capability of Pacific Island electoral management bodies.

An important part of the AEC’s support for international electoral management bodies is our 20 year involvement in the Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections (BRIDGE) program. BRIDGE is a modular professional development program with a particular focus on electoral processes. As a founding partner of BRIDGE, the AEC continues to deliver secretariat functions, develop new and updated curriculum and facilitation materials, and provide support and advice on project management and implementation. Along with the AEC, BRIDGE partners include:

• International IDEA—the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
• the International Foundation for Electoral Systems
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
• United Nations Electoral Assistance Division (UNEAD)

Our performance

This year we have further improved our performance framework, refined our agency directions into four agency activities, and provided more detailed performance measures and targets.

The AEC’s Performance Reporting Framework guides our approach to developing, managing and reporting our performance information in line with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. We measure our performance against four key activities and the results we intend to achieve.

The following pages detail our key activities and how we will measure our performance against these.

Reporting cycles

We continue to operate on two reporting cycles: externally we report on a four-year cycle through the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA) and we report internally as part of the electoral cycle. Externally, we report on a four-year cycle through the PGPA. We report our performance through the annual performance statements in our annual reports. Internally, we are focused on a three-year electoral cycle encompassing the three phases of election readiness used in our election readiness framework:

1. Lessons
2. Implement change
3. Mobilisation

We must always be ready to deliver an electoral event. Each phase of the election readiness framework directs the activities to be undertaken, and is reflected in the performance measures for the year. Our lessons management approach directs a continual cycle of improvement and learning across all aspects of AEC operations. In 2019–20—following delivery of the federal election in May 2019—we moved into the ‘lessons’ phase. In 2020–21 we will move through ‘implement change’ and then ‘mobilisation’ at the next federal event, currently expected in 2021–22.