Bosnia and Herzegovina: Post-War Election Management System

The Context

In 1996, Bosnia and Herzegovina held its first post-war election. The stakes could not have been higher. The election was a critical step in implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement and establishing a functioning national government in a country that had just emerged from years of devastating conflict. The international community, operating through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), was overseeing the process.

For the election to succeed, it needed infrastructure. It needed software.

My Role

I was engaged by the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) as Director of Systems Development for the project, based at OSCE headquarters in Sarajevo from June through September of 1996. It was a six to seven day per week operation from start to finish.

I was a working manager throughout. While leading and managing the development staff, I was writing code alongside them every day, personally developing significant portions of the system myself.

The Work

I led the design and development of a comprehensive election management system built in Microsoft Access with a SQL Server back-end. The software managed the complete lifecycle of the election process:

• Voter registration: Capturing and managing registration data for eligible voters across Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Candidate registration: Managing the registration of candidates and political parties standing for election
• Vote tabulation: Processing and aggregating results as they came in from polling stations across the country
• Results presentation: Delivering real-time election results to the international media at the OSCE media centre in Sarajevo

The results presentation component in particular carried enormous pressure. The eyes of the international community were on Sarajevo on election night, and the system had to perform flawlessly in front of the world’s press.

The Outcome

The election was a success. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first post-war national government was formed as a direct result of the process this software supported. The vote tabulation and results presentation ran without incident, delivering accurate results to the international media in real time.

What This Project Represents

Two post-war deployments in Bosnia and Herzegovina within a single decade. Two systems built under pressure, in difficult circumstances, for purposes that mattered enormously to real people. There was no tolerance for failure in either case, and neither system failed.

Working at OSCE headquarters in Sarajevo in 1996, in a city still bearing the scars of the siege, with the weight of a nation’s first free election resting in part on software I was writing, was an experience that shaped every professional judgment I have made since.