California Primary

We have several issues that have come up this week during the Christmas Holiday that have been difficult with vacations and well deserved breaks. For example:

Postscript file names do not specify a Vgroup2 designation so ballot printer or sample ballot printer can not distinguish files by filename
Write-in lines no longer line up at bottom of oval
Fresno's import is failing and they can't get their ballot layout done

Dmitry was able to respond and fix a crystal report that Jeff needed for the ballot order and printing. This was very helpful. However, most issues have pretty much fallen on Tari's shoulders (and Dmitry as best he could help). In the mean time, we have lost mportant time in the layout and ordering cycle. No one (at least no one I've spoken with) seems to know who is in charge of coordinating programming support and support services. We have entered the busiest ballot layout week of the year for California counties with very little programming technical support to respond to bugs and GEMS problems.

This email is not about people taking well deserved vacations. We all know that any vacation time is well deserved. It is, however, a request of Global/Diebold Management to check with the field, ask what's happening, and coordinate so that some form of technical support is available during critical election periods for our customers. This did not happen to my knowledge. An email indicating that certain personnel will be absent during specific times would help us set customer expectations or give us a chance to coordinate more effectively.