iBeta Quality Assurance Recommended as Voting System Test Lab

Business Wire, Jan 19, 2007

AURORA, Colo. -- iBeta Quality Assurance of Aurora, Colorado, received notification of accreditation as a Voting System Test Lab after an extensive audit by the National Voluntary Lab Accreditation Program (NVLAP) and has been recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to test voting systems against both the 2002 Voting System Standards and the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. The audit confirmed iBeta Quality Assurance's compliance with the international standard for the competence of testing laboratories (ISO/IEC 17025). iBeta Quality Assurance's next step is to apply to the EAC for full accreditation. The EAC announced they would conduct a "review of the recommended labs to address non-technical issues such as conflict of interest policies, organizational structure, and recordkeeping protocols. After the EAC review, the Commission will vote regarding full accreditation."

Vice President Earl Wing stated: "We are particularly pleased that we succeeded in being one of the first labs to be recommended by NIST. We credit the achievement of being one of only two labs accredited to test to the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines to the tremendous efforts of our dedicated staff including Carolyn Coggins (QA Director - Voting) and Gail Audette (Quality Manager)."

Both Ms. Coggins and Ms. Audette have extensive backgrounds in the testing of voting systems to the 1990 and 2002 Voting System Standards. As former Director of ITA Services and President of Engineering, respectively, they previously oversaw voting system qualification testing for a National Association of State Election Directors' (NASED) Hardware and Software Independent Test Authority. Both were ex-officio members of the NASED Voting System Technical Committee and provided testimony to the House Subcommittee on Environment, Technology and Standards on the subject of improvements in the testing and certification of voting equipment. In addition to authoring an article for the October 2004 special voting edition of the Communications of the ACM on testing of voting systems, Ms. Coggins has participated as a panel member on the same subject for both NIST and the EAC public meetings. In 2003 and 2004 she was asked to lead the Special Task Group for the Technical Data Package of the IEEE Voting Equipment Standards Project.

iBeta Quality Assurance offers a wide range of quality assurance, consulting and software test services to clients in the business and interactive entertainment industries. Test services include compatibility testing, manual and automated functional testing, localization testing, performance testing including load, stress, and scalability testing, software security audits, and beta test management. Federal testing of voting systems is a service edition for 2007. For more information, contact Mike Stark, Director of Sales and Marketing, at mstark@iBeta.com.