----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 12:27
PM
Subject: RE: Un-setting for
election
If we what to sell them our product we must
conform to their requirements.
Our first
priority is to generate correct election results. That is an
absolute. This is not a customer prerogative.
This was not the issue.The issue is
operational features and functionality. This is what will set us
apart from other companies that their fist and only priority is to
generate correct elections results. What is also an issue is that
each individual state, and county, or the customer as I call them, are the
ones that determine what is the correct results and how these should be
reported.
Or we just tell them that our system is not flexible
and that if he (the customer) does not change to our idea of how an
election must run, then we can not help him. We need to
make our system flexible to the fact that we the regular workers and the
customers are not perfect.
If
our customers, or anyone else, has suggestions on how to make
our products more flexible without compromising the integrity of the
election, the RCR list is at your disposal. I welcome (even
enjoy) suggestions that make GEMS easier to
use.
That is what the the support group does every
time they submit an RCR.
Elections, however, are event driven.
Ballots need to be printed by a certain deadline, and memory cards need to
be burnt by a certain deadline. In short, elections are not
flexible. That is the nature of our business. Get used to
it.
We are talking about DRE's in an early voting
environment and not election day or paper system like Accuvote. We should
not let Accuvote procedure necessarily dictate the future operations of
the DRE unit except for its ease of use for the poll worker and voter. I
am not dealing with Accuvote if I was then I would have no choice
but to deal with its limitations.But this too can be improved. Just
because we have done the same procedure a million times that does not mean
that it could not be improved upon.
Your job as I see it is to fix the problems that we
and the customers encounter as we run the elections.
My
job is to write election software. On occasion as an added
service I also explain how set-for-election works, even though
the feature has been in VTS since the day Global Election Systems was
formed. Apparently doing the latter was a mistake.
I guess I'll stick to my job description; I am better at
coding than support anyway.
Your job as well as mine
is to do whatever the company requires us to do to produce income for the
same. Your main objective is to write code but if
the need requires us to help in support, then that is our job. If we
need to help load trucks to meet shipping dead lines than that is our
job.
But really, I
am in too good a mood today to get into a job description debate with you,
Juan. I don't think you want that.
One of the main reason that many customers look at our
electronic system for early voting is due to the fact that the
should be able to change their election down to the wire without re
burning memory cards and reprinting ballots.
Again, if you
can suggest a way to design a electronic DRE system that does not have
removable media as its primary storage, I will be the first person to
champion it.
Well, our suggestion is to permit the
setting of Early voting portion of the election to be set prior to the
election day machines. And secondly to allow GEMS to be able to increases
the number of machines in any given precinct at any time with out
affecting the election. Both of these were sent to development as fixes to
GEMS for this election due to customer requirements.
If this is not the case
then we should not sell this product for early voting.
You'll need to
talk to sales about that suggestion. I just write the
stuff.
I need to talk to the software development
Group to follow support and sales input and direction as to what our
customer wants, needs, and is willing to pay for.
And this group's ability to follow
directions to that effect.
Ken, in general I do not have any problem
with you or your work, I do feel though that you sometimes do not
understand or are not sensitive to the predicament of sales and of
support staff when in the field in front of our customers trying to
explain why something does not work. Remember we do not have a cast
of thousands working in the support dept and my job is that of Product
Manager not support.
Because of extreme trust and great
relationships that sales and support staff develops with our customers, it
is about the only thing that keeps us in business with that customer. But
we can only go to the well so often until it runs dry.
I know that you are good at what you do
but so are we. Please realize that we are all trying to make Global
a bigger and stronger company so that we can grow both financially and
professionally. Let us work towards this goal with out trying to place
blame because we all suffer the consequence no matter who is to
blame.
Juan
Ken