Hey Brian, Gilda, Listers,
As many have observed, there must have been a serious planning lapse or a last minute change of requirements with respect to acquisition of the Results Transmission System (RTS) component - the EVID issues aside.
Drawing from experience in a Government ICT function, by the time the Request for Proposal (RFP) was issued late December 2012, the election being only two and a half months away, IEBC must have been in panic mode. In such cases the escape route is usually to ask the funding partner to use their less rigorous procedures to procure for you. So apparently IFES had to bear the risk of conducting a rushed procurement worsened by tight timelines for implementation and testing.
What's interesting though is; in government, departments do not merely decide to procure goods or services. Such items-must be in an annual work plan and the procurement plan by July (start of fiscal year). What would be useful to learn from Dismas and his team is - by July 2012, what did they have in their 2012/2013 annual plans for providing the RTS service. I do not believe they deliberately waited to have an RFP issued on December 21st with a 14 calendar day submission deadline in the middle of the festive period; and for a service required exactly 2 months after RFP submission..
I look forward to seeing some of the enormous lessons that will be presented to the Kenya ICT fraternity by this seemingly unfortunate scenario. Perhaps this will be an excellent Case Study for our Universities' MSc and BSc programs.
Best Regards
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe
<blongwe@gmail.com> wrote:
Gilda,
As facts begin to emerge, it seems that the IEBC ICT team were part of the problem. It is therefore likely that in the age old practice of covering their behinds, they would obfsucate the problems, even to top management in order to buy themselves time to firefight and hopefully fix things before they got out of hand. This time, unfortunately, the bluff didn't work, and with the whole country watching the only sensible thing management could do is put the system aside and stick to manual tally, which is what we have now.
As I have said earlier - we will need to know what happened, and we will need to see those responsible dealt with.
Best regards,
Brian
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Gilda Odera
<godera@skyweb.co.ke> wrote:
Listers,
I beg to differ here. It is about time we became perfectionists and stopped making excuses for our failure to ensure that the system was FULLY functional before the actual election took place. It is true that systems fail but in this case, it never really worked properly RIGHT FROM THE ONSET. If we keep adopting this attitude that 'systems fail' how will the processes and efficiencies ever be improved? It is wise to accept our weaknesses so we can improve on them. The moment the writing was on the wall, IEBC ICT Team should have advised of the risk of proceeding with the failing system in order for them to simply announce that they would have to run the elections on a dully manual system-expectations must always be managed, especially knowing how crucial these particular elections are for every party. Why is it that we don't normally read that systems failed during elections in all other countries. Probably because they fully prepare and have back up systems that work I event one fails!
Regards,
Gilda Odera
Agreed with Evans here.
Every single tech system has problems, that IEBC does as well should be no surprise. I've been spending last night and this morning trying to better understand how the IEBC's data flow works, their lack of clarity here is the only problem that I can find. You can see my questions, sources and even the IEBC RFP for the system here:
http://iebctechkenya.tumblr.com/
Polling station uses Safaricom SIM cards »App installed in phone, proprietary software from IFES » Transmitted via Safaricom’s VPN » Servers hosted/managed by Next Technologies (needs confirmation) »
Google hosted website at http://vote.iebc.or.ke »
Google hosted API at http://api.iebc.or.ke
You'll note that, besides the IEBC itself, there are at least 4 (large) organizations that have to be in sync in order for the system to work (Safaricom, IFES, Next Technologies, and Google). That's no small task, and as you can see by the list of companies involved, these are largely not local companies.
Edith, I beg to differ. Its not ICT that has failed here. Its the processes. Just throwing some expensive servers and plenty of bandwidth at a problem will not solve it. The top leadership has to fully understand their organization's ICT strategy. They have to internalize the opportunities that technology brings to the table, as well as the inherent risks that come with it. This cannot be left to techies, however good they may be. The reason being that if the organization that you lead fails (and the reason was technology), its you who is answerable, not the techies. This is the spirit of IT Governance.
It would be interesting to know if the IEBC commissioners fully understand the risks of the technologies that they are relying on.
Let us not blame the technology.
Evans
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Edith Adera
<eadera@idrc.ca> wrote:
Listers,
It is a shame that for the first time in Kenya's history when IT is given a chance to bring credibility and efficiency in the electoral process, ICT has failed SPECTACULARLY!
what went wrong?
Edith
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Regards,
Gilda Odera
Regards,
Gilda Odera
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