T-Spec
From Trust The Vote
T-Spec™ is a term that the OSDV has coined to describe the approach to creating trustworthy digital voting technology, for use in purpose-built digital voting systems that are inherently reliable and trustworthy.
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Overview
Transparent and Open
The OSDV is, by its nature, focused on truly transparent, publicly-vetted, peer-reviewed/improved and freely available voting technology specifications and standards – utilizing an “open source” approach. Thus, the chief differentiator and unique technical proposition of the OSDV is the idea of T-Spec, applied to digital voting technology with the transparency of open source methods. Accordingly, the OSDV is advancing a new concept: T-Spec for transparent, trustworthy systems with high- grade reliability and assurance.
Combined: Open Source and High Assurance
The T-Spec approach is an unusual combination of open source development with some approaches that are tried and true from the development high-reliability systems for NASA, DoD, DoE, as well as avionics, production control, other safety-critical systems. This combination approach is adapted for use with highly parallel, rapid, iterative, open-source source development.
Both the development process and the resulting software and systems are open and transparent, as a critical part of high assurance. We believe that voting technology is just as important as safety-critical systems, and deserves the same reliability and trust benefits, fortified by being developed and assessed in the public eye and the public trust.
The term T-Spec is intended to invoke two key concepts – Transparent and Trustworthy – as well as the concept of a very high grade of design, engineering, process, and system quality, a bit like that of MIL-SPEC – military grade – systems that require high-grade quality, reliability, and assurance. (You can read more about MIL-SPEC hereand about high assurance here.)
But rather than the a rigid and carefully controlled development process, T-Spec uses parallel, rapid development of specs, design, code, docs, etc., as well as rapid revision as work in one activity suggests improvements or modifications in others. Transparency is the principle that OSDV efforts and results of all kinds are open, collaborative, and publicly transparent. Transparency is critical several reasons: for cross-pollination between parallel efforts, for the “many eyes effect,” and for the ability for anyone to help identify opportunities for technical improvements, alternatives, or course corrections.
Built For Trust, and Earning It
T-Spec technology and systems are “built to be trusted,” as are traditional high-assurance systems, and includes similar results and work products such as code, specs, independent review, etc. However, the trustworthiness derives not from the MIL-SPEC approach, but the open source approach. With MIL-SPEC, the message is “trust our work, because you trust us to have followed a rigorous process.”
With T-Spec, the message is that people can decide for themselves whether a system is trustworthy because it was transparently specified, designed, and developed to enable independent review. Like MIL-SPEC, the various types of work product exist to support the code itself, but the work products are developed and remain in public view.
Building for Independent Review
Why Assessment?
Transparency as the basis of trust is particularly important for digital voting systems, because independent assessment and government certification are critical parts of the states’ system for ensuring high quality and reliability of voting systems. As a result, instead of just being built to be trusted, voting systems have to be built to earn trust by independent review.
The independent review drives another key aspec of T-Spec. In order for a system to be assessed, it must be assessed by comparison with some written account of what the system is supposed to do. Assessment is a process of examination of the system (including but not limited to source code review) to determine whether it has can do all and only the functions that it is supposed to have.
What's a Spec?
There's more to assessment, and more to building a system with assessment in mind, but the key word for T-Spec is "specification." A specification, or spec, is a document intended both for use in framing development activities, and assessment activities.
