Background
Trinity College Dublin is Ireland’s highest-ranked university. Home to 18,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and approximately 3,500 staff across all the major disciplines in the arts and humanities, business, law, engineering, science, and health sciences. Trinity has produced some of the world’s finest, most original minds including the writers Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett (Nobel laureate) and the former President of Ireland and UNHCR Mary Robinson. Trinity’s culture focuses on scholarship, innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and dedication to societal reform.
What they needed
Traditionally Trinity College has utilised a paper-based process for all of their nomination and voting activity. Our first project commenced in 2017 when they wanted to transition to using our online services for distributing electronic nomination and voting papers and utilise our secure online nomination and voting platform, encouraging staff and students to participate online.
They initially explored a system for a number of elections including:
- The election of staff to Trinity’s governing board, College Board
- The election of New Fellows and Fellows’ Assents to change text of the University’s Statutes
The solution
We listened carefully to Trinity Colleges voting requirements to ensure all their voting needs were met. Our customisable nomination and voting software was tailored to their requirements, and we developed functionality in our software to meet specific criteria for Trinity College, that aids both the end-user and the management process.
Initially, Trinity utilised a combination of paper and electronic voting methods, however following the success of their first project using our platform they soon moved completely to electronic voting and nominations. This bought them in line with campus-wide communications for staff and students which were all online.
The results
We have successfully managed several projects for Trinity College, offering our secure nomination and voting platform, often with quick turnarounds to meet their requirements. Projects have widened to now include other School, Discipline and Faculty projects which offers consistency throughout the University.
Our tailored online nomination and voting platform has streamlined their internal processes and significantly reduced their internal administration and associated costs.
We have ensured effective governance has been delivered to all stakeholders. Significant reductions in paper wastage have also been made as a result of utilising technology to support a greener and more sustainable approach to their election process.
More recently, based on Trinity College’s experience the Graduate Students Union (GSU), which is an independent body representing Trinity College’s postgraduate students, also used Mi-Voice in May 2020 to elect their President and Vice President. The election had the highest ever voter turnout recorded in the history of the GSU.
What they say
“Trinity’s experience of working with Mi-Voice is excellent. They tailored their offerings to our specific needs and situation to support each of a variety of different ballots and processes. We found their service to be exemplary, including response times, flexibility and accommodation of complex ballots.”
Professor Paula Murphy, Registrar – Trinity College Dublin