Encouraging democratic participation with software
Keynote Theatre | Wed 21 Jan 10:45 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
Presented by
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Vanessa Teague
https://www.democracydevelopers.org.au/2025/01/22/vanessa-teague/
Vanessa Teague's research focuses primarily on cryptographic methods for achieving security and privacy, particularly for issues of public interest such as election integrity and the protection of government data. She was part of the team (with Chris Culnane and Ben Rubinstein) who discovered the easy re-identification of doctors and patients in the Medicare/PBS open dataset released by the Australian Department of Health. She has co-designed numerous protocols for improved election integrity in e-voting systems, and co-discovered serious weaknesses in the cryptography of deployed e-voting systems in New South Wales, Western Australia and Switzerland. She lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Southeastern Australia (near Melbourne). In 2023 she founded Democracy Developers Ltd, an Australian not-for-profit that builds open-source software for supporting democracy.
Vanessa Teague
https://www.democracydevelopers.org.au/2025/01/22/vanessa-teague/
Vanessa Teague's research focuses primarily on cryptographic methods for achieving security and privacy, particularly for issues of public interest such as election integrity and the protection of government data. She was part of the team (with Chris Culnane and Ben Rubinstein) who discovered the easy re-identification of doctors and patients in the Medicare/PBS open dataset released by the Australian Department of Health. She has co-designed numerous protocols for improved election integrity in e-voting systems, and co-discovered serious weaknesses in the cryptography of deployed e-voting systems in New South Wales, Western Australia and Switzerland. She lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Southeastern Australia (near Melbourne). In 2023 she founded Democracy Developers Ltd, an Australian not-for-profit that builds open-source software for supporting democracy.
Abstract
I'll give an overview of what Democracy Developers is building to explain - and encourage participation in - Australian democracy. This will be part demo and part interactive session inviting the audience to suggest improvements or alternatives.
We'll discuss
- explaining elections and preferential voting (encouraging people to see where their vote goes),
- explaining current parliamentary bills and encouraging people to engage with their representatives about something they care about.
I'll give an overview of what Democracy Developers is building to explain - and encourage participation in - Australian democracy. This will be part demo and part interactive session inviting the audience to suggest improvements or alternatives.
We'll discuss - explaining elections and preferential voting (encouraging people to see where their vote goes), - explaining current parliamentary bills and encouraging people to engage with their representatives about something they care about.