Background
An independent and impartial state government body that runs state, local council and
statutory elections faced a challenge with their Election Management System (EMS),
specifically with the slow performance when processing returned envelope barcodes. This
issue impacted their ability to receive and process returned postal ballots – resulting in
delays to determining the election outcome. This will significantly impact the upcoming
Local Government (Council) postal election in the second half of 2024.
Challenge
Anodically at peak load the election management system was taking up to 20 minutes to
process a batch of 50 returned postal ballot barcodes (the business expectation was around
2 minutes). The client needed to identify and address the performance issues to improve
the postal ballot barcode scanning processing.
Solution
KJR, a trusted software quality engineering consulting firm were engaged to deliver
performance testing on the EMS BPER component. The KJR consultants created a
comprehensive performance test approach, reusable automated JMeter scripts for testing,
a set of database SQL scripts to extract election barcodes/reset barcode scanning,
executed performance, and reported on the test outcomes.
Deliverables
The project deliverables included; a performance test plan, a set of reusable JMeter scripts
for performance testing, SQL scripts for resetting and extracting mail in ballot barcodes, a
baseline performance test to provide quantitative as-is performance, a set of comparison
performance tests to verify the performance issues are addressed, and reports on the test
outcomes and recommendations for improving the BPER component performance.
Key Outcomes
The performance testing conducted by KJR identified a set of slow REST requests within
the BPER component and verified the performance issues were addressed. The client now
have the confidence the returned mail in barcode scanning will not delay announcing the
2024 local government election outcome.
Value to Client
The client can now go into the Local Government election with confidence their returned
ballot entry process will not delay determining the Local Government election outcome.
Tools & Technologies
- Microsoft Azure
- Apache JMeter
- Azure SQL
