Most governments require that their procured e-voting systems are ``inspected'' by an objective, competent agency and that their suitability for use be verified before they can be deployed. There are many international standards, and standards bodies responsible for documenting and enforcing these standards, in a wide range of disciplines such as telecommunications, medicine and transport. Additional rigour can be added to this process by requiring that the agencies responsible for the testing have themselves been accredited. Such accreditation will increase confidence in the agencies being competent and independent only if the standards are expressed in such a way that there is no doubt that the agencies are able to measure any given e-voting system against them, without risk of a system that does not meet the standards expected being passed as having met the standards.
Clearly then the CoE recommendations must not only say what standards are to be met, but must also state the minimum requirements expected of any agency that can be authorised to test a system against these standards. Without this additional safeguard one increases the risk that an e-voting system is procured, and that it is passed for use by an independent agency, and it subsequently fails to meet the required standards. In such a scenario it is very difficult to identify which actor is responsible for the system failing after deployment.