Provision to all staff not only of the appropriate legislation, regulations, and rules, but preparation of manuals and checklists for all activities will assist with this. There is another more personal and positive aspect to responsibility assignment. Identifying and promoting individual accountabilities can raise staff self-fulfilment and lead to enhanced performance. Too many responsibilities assigned to centralised levels of authority both wastes any available expertise and stunts its further development in any local or field offices. This can also overload those who should be ensuring overall supply, quality, consistency, and integrity with distracting operational tasks at local levels.
Voting is a localised function.
However, materials development and production, standards, procedures and quality control are generally more consistent and effective where centrally driven. Where such liaison is required, work plans must identify the operational staff within the electoral management body with the accountability for task completion and the liaison structures that will be in place. Where voting operations functions are contracted to other organisations, it is vital that accountabilities for ensuring these tasks are completed correctly are still assigned to specific persons within the electoral management body. At the voting station level, also, developing work plans that assign specific task responsibilities to particular staff can both increase the efficiency of training and assist in voter service, while maintaining some flexibility.