WAEC: Online Disclosure System

The Challenge

The Cook Government introduced the Electoral Amendment (Finance and Other Matters) Bill 2023, requiring real-time disclosure of political donations, moving from annual reporting to next-business-day disclosure during election campaigns. Western Australia and Queensland would have the most rapid disclosure timeframe in Australia.

The system needed to serve all political parties equally, be simple enough that smaller parties weren’t unfairly burdened, and maintain public confidence in the electoral process.

Wearing Three Hats

This project demanded versatility. I was simultaneously the Business Analyst (mapping requirements across competing stakeholder needs), the UX/UI Designer (designing the interface for both internal workflows and the public dashboard), and the Power Apps Developer (building the system that would handle real-time disclosure data). I introduced process maps and decision diagrams to visualise complex legislative rules, allowing the team to adapt swiftly to changes and maintain delivery momentum. I also customised Azure B2C authentication flows for the external portal.

Stakeholder Facilitation Under Pressure

I ran 7 workshops with individual political parties to build the ODS to meet their needs and consult them on the system design. The hard part was not the interface; it was facilitating impartially across political parties who each had different operational realities, technical capabilities, and levels of trust in the process.

I also ran user interviews, usability testing and UAT across the project, ensuring the system worked not just for the political parties but for the internal WAEC teams processing disclosure data.

Seven political parties reconciled into one system, neutrally, under statutory scrutiny. Almost no UX portfolio has an equivalent scenario.

The System

The Online Disclosure System is live and in active use. It provides public visibility of political donations with filterable views across Disclosures, Election Returns, and Annual Returns. Donations over $1,000 must be disclosed by the end of the next business day during election campaigns.

Three Major Releases

I provided UX, business analysis and technical leadership across 3 major releases of the platform, translating evolving electoral legislation into a secure, accessible system. Each release required re-engagement with political parties to validate that legislative changes had been correctly interpreted and implemented. The impartiality requirement wasn’t a one-off, it was sustained across the programme.

Why This Matters

The standout here is judgment under adversarial conditions, not the technology. Impartial facilitation across competing political interests, under statutory scrutiny, while simultaneously building the system. That combination of soft skills and technical delivery is rare.

WAEC was also a significant growth arc: it was my first Power Apps/Dynamics project. By Releases 2 and 3, I had become a full-fledged Power Pages developer, to the point where the Power Platform practice attempted to recruit me to their team. That trajectory from first exposure to practice-level competency across a single engagement is a strong demonstration of rapid technology uptake.

“I think the final design was really clean and effective and the additional UX elements made for an easy-to-use public-facing system. I appreciated your contributions in team meetings, taking the lead when needed to provide, and support, an Insight perspective on developments.” Justin Harbord, Director Enrolment and Regulation, Western Australian Electoral Commission

Hard Skills

Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse, Azure B2C, Azure DevOps, DevOps pipelines and deployments, Figma, process mapping, decision diagrams, business analysis, requirements mapping

Soft Skills

Impartial facilitation across adversarial stakeholders, statutory compliance, sustained stakeholder relationships across multiple releases, simultaneous BA/UX/developer delivery, legislative interpretation, user interviews and UAT, rapid technology uptake (first Power Apps project → practice-level competency)