Case Study: Australian Electoral Commission Redistribution

Since late 2015 Spatial Vision has provided the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) with hardcopy and digital mapping support.

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In 2016 Spatial Vision further assisted the AEC in preparing a national map of the 2016 Federal Electoral Boundaries.

These maps had to accommodate diverse electorates and remain quickly readable in both colour and greyscale presentations. Additionally, with the election looming, the job involved delivering a significant volume of maps to a tight deadline.

As part of the Commissions obligation to consult the public in its pentannual electoral boundary – redistribution, the AEC publishes PDF maps of the proposed boundary changes on its website, as well as providing high quality, large format maps to its branches and those of our major political parties. With the timely delivery of these maps, the AEC invited Spatial Vision to update another of its key national electoral division maps, revising its style while integrating key AEC visual elements, such as their signature colours for each state.

Customer Profile

Organisation: Australian Electoral Commission

Location: Australia

Website: aec.gov.au

Solution

Benefits

“Working on three federal redistributions at once is tough. Spatial Vision worked with secretariats in three different states and territories to produce maps made publicly available at two key stages of the federal redistribution process. Their high level of responsiveness and ability to adapt and refine the different map products mean that the we are better able to inform electors and members of the House of Representatives about potential and actual changes to federal electoral divisions.”

Nicole TaylorNational Redistributions Manager, Australian Electoral Commission

The Issue

Through the course of the redistribution consultation process the AEC has to provide the public with a great volume of mapping that is both accurate enough to satisfy government standards, but flexible enough to accommodate the numerous alterations that can take place over the process. The AEC required the maps to work across several formats and levels of detail, from greyscale maps 8cm across embedded into their report on the proposed redistribution, to poster-sized, full colour fold-out maps.

This difficulty was compounded by the nature of the the redistribution maps themselves, which can easily becoming chaotic and extremely difficult to read as the complicated boundaries of the various federal electorates overlap one another. This issue can be particularly pronounced when electorates are added or removed from states, as occurred in New South Wales and Western Australia.

The Solution

We utilised powerful automation tools to quickly generate the backbones of the map, allowing us to allocate the human resources we needed to ensure that the most complex and demanding aspects of the job were completed with the accuracy the client expected.

To further ensure the maps lived up to the AEC and the public’s exacting standards, we designed a workflow which allowed the client to directly interface with our quality assurance software and cloud file delivery service, avoiding the time consuming process of sending revisions back and forth that can hold up any project which requires a high level of detail.

The Benefits

The outputs of this work provide:

Attractive maps that scale from a booklet to a wall poster
Clear design and linework ensures the complex interweaving electorate boundaries of the map remain distinct and easily comprehensible, whether printed in colour or greyscale
Hit rolling deadlines through effective prioritisation, ensuring the public had time to adequately engage in the consultation process
Spatial data and stylistic elements were easily ported over to additional projects the AEC required, ensuring the projects’ cost-efficiency