DIREC project

Verified Voting protocols and blockchains

Summary

There is constant interest for Internet Voting by election commissions around the world. At the same time, there is a need for online voting in blockchain governance. However, building an internet voting system is not easy: The design of new cryptographic protocols is error-prone, and public trust in the elected body is easily threatened.

Together with an industrial partner, this project aims to improve the security and quality of the internet voting system and influence regulation on minimum quality requirements for blockchains.

Project period: 2023-2025
Budget: DKK 7,5 million

Project Manager

Associate Professor Bas Spitters
Department of Computer Science, AU
spitters@cs.au.dk

More info

Our aim is to bring the security proofs about protocols much closer to their implementation.

Here are four considerations that explain the unmet needs of this project.

Voting protocols, both in form of Blockchain Governance Protocols and Internet Voting Protocols have become increasingly popular and will be more widely deployed, as a result of an ongoing digitalization effort of democratic processes and also driven by the current pandemic.
Elections are based on trust, which means that election systems ideally should be based on algorithms and data structures that are already trusted. Blockchains provide such a technology. They provide a trusted bulletin board, which can be used as part of voting.
Voting crucially depends on establishing the identity of the voter to avoid fraud and to establish eligibility verifiability.
Any implementation created by a programmer, be it a Blockchain Governance Protocol or an Internet Voting Protocol can have bugs that quickly erode public confidence.

This project aims to shed more light on the overall research question, how to design high assurance blockchain governance software, and can such protocols scale to Internet Voting Protocols.

(RO) To advance the state of the art of high assurance cryptographic software, especially for blockchain governance protocols and voting protocols.

(WP1) To achieve (RO), we start by working towards a high assurance implementation of a blockchain governance protocol (e.g. the one used by Concordium) and an existing blockchain voting protocol, such as the Open Vote Network, or Election Guard. If there is sufficient progress in the design of a software-independent protocol we will retarget our research to such a protocol. This will use existing software projects developed at AU: SSProve, ConCert and various libraries for high assurance cryptographic primitives. AU will take the lead for this WP.

(WP2) The Concordium blockchain provides a secure and private way to put credentials, such as passport information, on the internet. In this project we aim to integrate this with legacy ID infrastructure, such as MitID. We will investigate how to reuse such blockchain based identities for internet voting. We aim to address (4) above in this way. Concordium will take the lead for this WP.

(WP3) Implementation of the cryptographic protocol. Based on the results from (WP1), we propose to develop an open-source library that makes our high assurance blockchain voting technology available for use in third-party products. We envision to release a prototype similar to Election Guard (which is provided by Microsoft), but with a blockchain providing the ID infrastructure, as well as functioning as a public bulletin board. ALX will take the lead for this WP.

Scientific value
Internet voting provides a unique collection of challenges, such as, for example, vote privacy, software quality, receipt freeness, coercion resistance, and dispute resolution. Subsets of them can be solved separately, here we aim to guarantee vote privacy and software quality by the means of a privacy-preserving and accountable blockchain and formally verify substantial parts of the resulting voting protocol.

Capacity building
The proposed project pursues capacity building by training a PhD student. The Alexandra Institute will build capacity in rust, smart contracts and high assurance cryptographic software.

Business value
The project is highly interesting to and relevant for the industry. There are two reasons why it is interesting for Concordium. On the one hand, voting is an excellent application demonstrating the vision of the blockchain and, on the other hand, Concordium will as part of the project implement a voting scheme to be used for decentralized governance of the blockchain. More precisely, the Concordium blockchain is designed to support applications where users can act privately while maintaining accountability and meeting regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, it is an explicit goal of Concordium to support formally verified smart contracts. Obviously, all these goals fit nicely with the proposed project, and it will be important for Concordium to demonstrate that the blockchain actually supports the secure voting schemes developed in the project. With respect to governance, Concordium has a need to develop a strong voting scheme allowing members of our community to vote on proposed features and to elect members of the Governance Committee. The project is of great interest to the Alexandra Institute to apply and improve in-house capacity for implementing cryptographic algorithms. The involvement of Alexandra will guarantee that the theoretical findings of the proposed project will we translated into usable real world products.

Societal value
Internet voting was stalled for three years in Switzerland due to insecure protocols and implementations. We aim to develop technology to improve the security (audits) of such protocols and implementations. Around 5 billion dollars were lost since 2018 due to insecure blockchain implementations, often effecting retail investors. Our project aims to improve the state of the art of cryptographic software, and thus influence regulation on minimal quality requirements for blockchains, similar to existing Swiss regulation for e-voting.

Impact

The project seeks to implement secure blockchain-based voting schemes, supporting decentralized governance and regulatory compliance, while also advancing cryptographic software to enhance security measures and influence regulatory standards, thereby mitigating risks and improving societal trust in digital voting and blockchain implementations.

Insights

Researchers have developed secure digital voting booths – but will voters trust blockchain?

June 21, 2024

Researchers and industry are investigating the possibilities of blockchain-based voting

December 22, 2022

Partners

DIREC project

REWORK

- The Future of Hybrid Work

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent lockdown, demonstrated the potential benefits and possibilities of remote work practices, as well as the remarkable deficiencies such practices bring. ‘Zoom fatigue’, resulting from high cognitive loads and intense amounts of eye contact, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remote and hybrid work will certainly be part of most work practices, but what should these future work practices look like? Should we merely attempt to fix what we already have or can we be bolder and design a different kind of future workplace? Together with companies, this project seeks a vision of the future that integrates hybrid work experiences.

Project period: 2022-2025
Budget: DKK 20,21 million

Project Manager

Associated Professor Eve Hoggan
Department of Computer Science, AU
eve.hoggan@cs.au.dk

More info

There are a multitude of reasons to embrace remote and hybrid work. Climate concerns are increasing, borders are difficult to cross, work/life balance may be easier to attain, power distributions in society could potentially be redressed, to name a few. This means that the demand for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems that support hybrid work will increase significantly. At the same time, we consistently observe and collectively experience that current digital technologies struggle to mediate the intricacies of collaborative work of many kinds. Even when everything works, from network connectivity to people being present and willing to engage, there are aspects of embodied co-presence that are almost impossible to achieve digitally.

We argue that one major weakness in current remote work technologies is the lack of support for relation work and articulation work, caused by limited embodiment. The concept of relation work denotes the fundamental activities of creating socio-technical connections between people and artefacts during collaborative activities, enabling actors in a global collaborative setting to engage each other in activities such as articulation work. We know that articulation work cannot be handled in the same way in hybrid remote environments. The fundamental difference is that strategies of awareness and coordination mechanisms are embedded in the physical surroundings, and use of artefacts cannot simply be applied to the hybrid setting, but instead requires translation.

Actors in hybrid settings must create and connect the foundational network of globally distributed people and artefacts in a multitude of ways.

In REWORK, we focus on enriching digital technologies for hybrid work. We will investigate ways to strengthen relation work and articulation work through explorations of embodiment and presence. To imagine futures and technologies that can be otherwise, we look to artistic interventions, getting at the core of engagement and reflection on the future of remote and hybrid work by imagining and making alternatives through aesthetic speculations and prototyping of novel multimodal interactions (using the audio, haptic, visual, and even olfactory modalities). We will explore the limits of embodiment in remote settings by uncovering the challenges and limitations of existing technical solutions, following a similar approach as some of our previous research.

Scientific value
REWORK will develop speculative techniques and ideas that can help rethink the practices and infrastructures of remote work and its future. REWORK focuses on more than just the efficiency of task completion in hybrid work. Rather, we seek to foreground and productively support the invisible relation and articulation work that is necessary to ensure overall wellbeing and productivity.

Specifically, REWORK will contribute:

Speculative techniques for thinking about the future of remote work;
Multimodal prototypes to inspire a rethink of remote work;
Design Fictions anchoring future visions in practice;
Socio-technical framework for the future of hybrid remote work practices;
Toolkits for industry.

The research conducted as part of REWORK will produce substantial scientific contributions disseminated through scientific publications in top international journals and conferences relevant to the topic. The scientific contributions will constitute both substantive insights and methodological innovations. These will be targeting venues such as the Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, ACM TOCHI, Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, the ACM CHI conference, NordiCHI, UIST, DIS, Ubicomp, ICMI, CSCW, and others of a similar level.

The project will also engage directly and closely with industries of different kinds, from startups that are actively envisioning new technology to support different types of hybrid work (Cadpeople, Synergy XR, and Studio Koh) to organizations that are trying to find new solutions to accommodate changes in work practices (Arla, Bankdata, Keyloop, BEC).

Part of the intent of engagement with the artistic collaboratory is to create bridges between artistic explorations and practical needs articulated by relevant industry actors. REWORK will enable the creation of hybrid fora to enable such bridging. The artistic collaboratory will enable the project to engage with the general public through an art exhibit at Catch, public talks, and workshops. It is our goal to exhibit some of the artistic output at a venue, such as Ars Electronica, that crosses artistic and scientific audiences.

Societal value
The results of REWORK have the potential to change everybody’s work life broadly. We all know that “returning to work after COVID-19” will not be the same – and the combined situation of hybrid work will be a challenge. Through the research conducted in REWORK, individuals that must navigate the demands of hybrid work and the organizations that must develop policies and practices to support such work will benefit from the improved sense of embodiment and awareness, leading to more effective collaboration.

REWORK will take broadening participation and public engagement seriously, by offering online and in-person workshops/events through a close collaboration with the arts organization Catch (catch.dk). The workshops will be oriented towards particular stakeholder groups – artists interested in exploring the future of hybrid work, industry organizations interested in reconfiguring their existing practices – and open public events.

Capacity building
There are several ways in which REWORK contributes to capacity building. Firstly, by collaborating with the Alexandra Institute, we will create a multimodal toolbox/demonstrator facility that can be used in education, and in industry.

REWORK will work closely with both industry partners (through the Alexandra Institute) and cultural (e.g. catch.dk)/public institutions for collaboration and knowledge dissemination, in the general spirit of DIREC.

We will include the findings from REWORK in our research-based teaching at all three universities. Furthermore, we plan to host a PhD course, or a summer school, on the topic in Year 2 or Year 3. Participants will be recruited nationally and internationally.

Lastly, in terms of public engagement, HCI and collaborative technologies are disciplines that can be attractive to the public at large, so there will be at least one REWORK Open Day where we will invite interested participants, and the DIREC industrial collaborators.

Impact

The project creates value by providing research-driven insights and practical solutions to address the challenges of hybrid work environments post-COVID-19, fostering improved collaboration, sense of embodiment, and awareness among individuals and organizations, thereby positively impacting work life and public engagement.