Updating the IER-DS Certificate
The electoral registration system uses a certificate supplied by the Cabinet Office to authenticate data sync between Lancaster City Council's systems and central government's IER systems. This is essential for the Elections department.
At present Cabinet Office only accept requests from our two named administrators, as delegated rights from the Electoral Returning Officer. At present this is Graeme Grant and Nick Goulden. If you are wanting to undertake this work, please speak with one of these named individuals first as they will need to submit the renewal. If both admins are unavailable for the foreseeable future, please work with the Elections Manager and/or the Office of the Chief Executive on granting access for a new person.
Firstly a notification will arrive either from Cabinet or via the Elections team. Once received please action as follows:
1. Open the Electoral Registration software Xpress - this will require you have access to both the Xpress software as well as being an active user in the Xpress system. If required please speak with Elections to set this up.
2. Navigate to "Maintenance" and then "Options...". Once Opened please click on the "IER" tab at the top. This should appear as:
3. Here please place a tick in the option "Enable Entry:". This will then allow you to click the option "Renew Certificate...", as such:
5. In the dialogue please confirm you are happy to proceed and save the *.PEM request file to the location provided on the W: (\\xpress01\xpress) drive under Export\Certificates\[currentdate]\
6. Copy the file CSR.pem, and this file only to a location you can attach to email. Note Xpress will generate a private key file, this is to be left where it is, DO NOT send this with the CSR
7. Email the CSR only to ierservice@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk following any instructions in their initial email
They may wish to call the sender to confirm the request is genuine, please expect this call and answer
8. Once this has taken place they will email the certificate back to us. Please take this file and copy to the folder generated in step 5
9. Back in Xpress, once again navigate to "Maintenance" and then "Options..." and back under the "IER" tab please now place a tick in the option "Enable Entry:" if needed, and then click on "Upload Certificate..."
10. In the dialogue pop up, please navigate and select the certificate file copied in step 8
11. Confirm all dialogues. You should now see the new expiry date below the renew and upload boxes
12. Next click "Communications Test" on the IER tab in System Options, seen here:
This should return a success message
13. Either perform an IER data sync yourself, or ask Elections undertake one. This will fully confirm connectivity
14. Reply to cabinet's IER team to let them know it has been successful. They will reply in the affirmative if they also see our connection inbound
15. Confirm with elections (usually via a ticket in FreshService) that this has taken place