In mid-April, the National Election Office (NVI) commissioned Ernst & Young Tanácsadó Kft. to examine the causes of the temporary breakdown of its website on election day. The audit has now come to an end, and here are its main conclusions.
The National Election System (NVR) processing the election data functioned without any failure during the election, no problem linked to the operation of the NVR was identified by the audit.
The election website (www.valasztas.hu), whose primary purpose is to keep the population and the nominating organizations up-to-date, operates totally separately from the NVR as a system apart. Information displayed on the election website are only indicative and have no impact on the election results in the case of a failure. The legally binding final result is determined on the basis of the paper-based processing of data.
According to information provided by the organs in charge of the IT security of the election, no event critical to the IT security occurred during the conduct of the election. This is confirmed by data form the electoral IT security operations center.
On the basis of details at our disposal, the website www.valasztas.hu and the server environment were not able to keep up with the increased load for reasons linked to configuration and resource-allocation. Following a decision of the president of the NVI, there was a transition to the back-up portal which indeed lived up, without failure, to its purpose of keeping the population informed. Before the election, the NVI had already brought the existence of a back-up portal and possible transition to the knowledge of the political parties with a representation in the parliament.
An examination by the National Cybersecurity Institute into the failure causing the breakdown of the NVI website is also under way. The NVI will provide every data and information necessary at its disposal.
Once it has got knowledge of the conclusions of the examinations, the NVI will review and revise all its contracts and processes related to the website www.valasztas.hu, and will, furthermore, carefully consider the possibility of making the contract guarantees prevail.
Budapest, 4 May 2018