A service for academic registrars to facilitate the electoral registration of students, driving democratic engagement and enhancing compliance with HERA 2017.
This shared service will enable academic registrars to facilitate student electoral registration by offering a simple web app for students to register to vote.
Developed in consultation with the Academic Registrars Council and the Association of Heads of University Administration, the service will automatically transfer data to the relevant, participating electoral registrars reducing the administrative burden of working with multiple electoral registrars across the UK.
The service will also provide reports and dashboards for both academic and electoral registrars.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017, s 13(1)(f), creates a new statutory requirement on higher education (HE) providers to “take such steps as the OfS considers appropriate for facilitating cooperation between the provider and one or more electoral registration officers in England for the purpose of enabling the electoral registration of students who are on higher education courses provided by the provider”
Rather than have each HE provider implement their own solution to meet this requirement, we are developing a shared service for the sector.
What we are working on
Data collection
The service will collect the data relevant needed for electoral registration. The service will collect this data from the student and, where possible, from the HE provider if they already have this data to provide a more seamless experience for students.
The service will aggregate this data on a monthly basis and share it securely with the relevant, participating electoral registrars.
Jisc will seek to contract with every participating HE provider and local authority to provide the legal basis for transfer of data and to ensure the highest standards of service delivery.
We will maintain the on-going relationship between the participating HE providers and local authorities to liaise on operational and other issues, reducing the administrative burden on HE providers.
Regular reporting
The service will provide regular reports to academic and electoral registrars. These will enable HE providers to monitor the progress of electoral registration within their institutions, and provide overall statistics and the opportunity for benchmarking progress across the sector.
How does this affect you?
Assuming 100% uptake by HE providers in England and Wales, we estimate the service would save the sector approximately £3M over the period 2019/20 - 2021/22.
The service will be offered on a subscription basis to recover the costs of development and operation.
