Sacramento, CA - September 8, 2009 --The California Secretary of State’s Office awarded Catalyst Consulting Group the contract for their Statewide Voter Registration System Project known as VoteCal. As one of the federal requirements under HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002), all states were required to implement a statewide voter registration database that would supersede the county and local databases as the official voter registry. After a 4 year interim solution, VoteCal will become the permanent Voter Registration system for the State of California providing full HAVA compliance and numerous other benefits.
Catalyst’s contract was awarded after a “business-based” procurement process in which interested bidders were able to present and discuss solutions and approaches to meeting California’s unique requirements. Catalyst attributes its selection above the many firms pursuing the project in part for its success in delivering a similar system for the State of Illinois in 2008. To help ensure success in California, Catalyst has included DFM Associates on its team. DFM is the California-based vendor of local election management software systems for over half of all California counties. Additionally, Microsoft is part of the Catalyst team and will play a key technical advisory role.
The VoteCal system will improve the voter registration process when validating addresses and managing registration transfers between local jurisdictions. It will validate voter identities through interfaces to Department of motor vehicles and social security administration systems, and imports and matches of death records and felony incarceration records from other state agencies. It will generate and track residency confirmation cards and other voter correspondence. In general, VoteCal will automate and support a broad range of voter registration reporting and management tasks at the state level.
The VoteCal project also includes the development of self-service secure public website features including online voter registration.
VoteCal is an enterprise scale system integration project that involves the development of the system software, the deployment of middleware to California’s 58 counties, the integration of existing local Election Management System products at each county, the integration of systems at other state agencies, and the implementation of a highly available hosting infrastructure. The hosting infrastructure involves a virtualized “cloud” of application and database servers, a storage area network, use of clustering and data replication for high availability and load balancing, redundancy of network components, and advanced security measures. Catalyst will deploy a separate redundant hosting platform in an offsite state datacenter with automatic failover capabilities should the primary hosting infrastructure go offline for any reason.
The system will be deployed in approximately 28 months followed by a 12-month maintenance period that is built into the contract. The contract includes options to extend maintenance services up to 5 additional years.
Full details of the VoteCal project and contract award can be found on the California Secretary of State’s Website.
The Secretary of State's office is comprised of nearly 500 people who are dedicated to making government more transparent and accessible in the areas of elections, business, political campaigning, legislative advocacy, and historical treasures.
About California Secretary of State
The Secretary of State's responsibilities include:
- Serving as the state's Chief Elections Officer
- Implementing electronic filing and Internet disclosure of campaign and lobbyist financial information
- Chartering corporations
- Maintaining business filings
- Commissioning notaries public
- Operating the Safe at Home Confidential Address Program
- Maintaining the Domestic Partners and Advance Health Care Directive Registries
- Safeguarding the State Archives
- Serving as a trustee of the California Museum for History, Women & the Arts
Visit the California Secretary of State’s Website for more information.
About Catalyst
Founded in 1992, Catalyst Consulting Group, Inc. is a Chicago based management and IT services consulting firm primarily serving the needs of State and Local governments as well as private sector companies. Branch offices include Springfield, Illinois and Indianapolis, Indiana. www.catconsult.com.
Catalyst Press Contact:
Travis Bloomfield
Catalyst Consulting Group, Inc.
312-629-0750
travis.bloomfield@catconsult.com