Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC. Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS - to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote ".......I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!" Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, ".....I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!". As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles - US$105m). Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn't. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the "closest" we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor "failed" this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter's card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.?
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country.
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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Aquinas, I agree with you 110% about the "human factor" aspect of the issues with IEBC. I will take this opportunity to (re) post my piece on the human factor which I had shared a couple weeks ago. --------------- In #140Friday over the past several days we have been discussing issues and challenges that face the implementation of IT systems, with special focus on “Public Service” IT systems. This attention has largely been triggered by the failure of Kenya’s Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Results Transmission System (RTS). Last week #140Friday had a face-to-face meeting at the Nailab which brought together a diverse group of professionals from various backgrounds to discuss the subject. As the group talked about “what went wrong” and “what could have been done better” with regards to various Public IT systems one key point that consistently came up was the importance of the human factor. [image: godfinger]<http://140friday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/godfinger.jpg> Most IT system implementations apply project management techniques in order to have a higher success rate, better performance management, efficient management of time and resources and better communication amongst key stakeholders. But research and experience have shown that tools, processes and analytics only show about half of the picture, the most critical (and least obvious) is what we can call the “human factor”. All projects consist of people with needs, wants, desires, issues and time constraints. This “human factor” must be addressed in order to ensure higher levels of project success. As more details emerge about the IEBC RTS project it becomes evident that the human factor probably contribute to most, if not all of the problems that led to the projects failure. There appear to have been a number of blunders, both big as well as small which affected the entire process from beginning to end. Ranging from personal pride (or should we call it obstinacy?) amongst key members of IEBC top management, who turned away advice and offers of assistance to address problems that became evident weeks and months prior to the election. The lack of electricity at tallying and polling stations and the failure to take appropriate measures to ensure that electronics being used had stable power supply points to poor planning and preparation. The locations where tallying and polling stations would be located were known many months prior to the elections. It would have been a simple task to allocate a team the task of ensuring that there was reliable power in each and every room that would be used for the election, unfortunately this issue was never addressed or came to the fore too late for anything meaningful to be done about it. This is a perfect example of an oversight that comes as a result of the human factor. It has been humorously stated that all project failures have 6 phases: 1. Enthusiasm 2. Disillusionment 3. Panic 4. Search for the guilty 5. Punishment of the innocent 6. Praise and honors for the non-participants Interestingly enough, the IEBC RTS projects seems to be going through these phases with the entire country acting as judge, jury and executioner. While all the details are still not in the public domain, it is safe to say that this particular project shall go down in the annals of Kenyan ICT history as a classic example of how *NOT* to do things. Some recommendations on how to address human factor challenges (from Kim Resch “Using The Human Factor To Launch Products”) *Management Buy-In* 1. The larger the project the more management support is needed 2. Get and keep management involved in the right projects at the right time – don’t wear out your welcome 3. First thing, gain the clear understanding of the manager’s highest level goals and desires 4. On a regular basis meet one-on-one with management to up-date and ask for support 5. Meet with, face-to-face, each manager of each person assigned to the project – gain commitment 6. When priorities shift re-commit with all levels of management 7. Gain outward signs of approval & support from management *Team Dynamics* 1. Get to know each person on your team, including personal likes, interests, etc. & share about yourself too 2. Get buy-in – sell hard when necessary 3. Trust the people on your team and show them you trust them 4. Give them a chance to shine and get recognition – ‘relinquishing power’ 5. Define their strengths & weaknesses 6. Spend time explaining the importance of the project – to the bigger picture 7. Write thank-you notes and take time to have a snack/lunch with the team 8. Go out of your way to care and be personal 9. Never let family or the individual come second 10. And at the same time, push them through example and challenge them beyond what they think they can do *Essential Communications* 1. After leadership the second most important role you will play 2. Watch for issues, build-up and possible explosions – only way to know is via talking, seeing and sharing 3. E-mail is the scourge of proper and effective communications – great for documentation, horrible for getting the right out-come 4. Communicate often with the key team members and (on larger or fast projects, do so every day), with the larger circle of members at minimum weekly 5. Utilize all forms of communications 6. Involve upper management in formal & relaxed moments 7. Restate the mission, goals, business impact, etc. 8. At start of program develop a scope document that includes the business value and the ‘why it is important’ 9. Handwrite thank-you notes along the way *Convert Mountains into Molehills* 1. Obstacle remover 2. Work the team to bring expectations into alignment 3. Shut down gossip and trash-talk 4. Address problems head on – first to the immediate person then go up the chain 5. Clarify, define and bring into prospective 6. Feel the pain, but move beyond to the result – generate a positive outcome 7. When a person is blocking the project’s success, after attempts to correct the behavior, have them removed – nothing and no one is untouchable 8. Keep the mission visible and the end result alive 9. Don’t let scope creep & ‘fix all the ills of the business’, change the project’s desired result *Keep spirits up* 1. Utilize recognition & incentives 2. Non-cash rewards are better 3. Both team and individual rewards & recognition 4. Reward for each milestone or important result 5. Say thank you, in writing and in group settings 6. Hold up performers 7. Hold a kick-off meeting followed up with an activity 8. Reward positive behaviors openly, handle poor behaviors privately and one-on-one (use as a learning experience) 9. Get management to ‘stop by’ performing individuals’ cubes/offices or meetings to say ‘I heard and wanted to say…’ 10. Create performance legends & stories 11. The positive spirit begins with you *Velocity & Vision* 1. Determine upfront how much or little the specific project requires – the tools, tracking and formal processes 2. Create a vision the team can believe in, including how fast and why 3. Create a sense of urgency and action (if it can be done now then do it) 4. Important means speed – velocity only comes with a clear understanding of where you started and where you are going 5. Make it real, make it tangible 6. The pace of the leader sets the pace of the pack! On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]>wrote:
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”**. *As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
*What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.*
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [ mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day
difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT
the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one
fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing
with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it
is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside
from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]>
wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank
God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages. positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. that has been evident between the two principals since day one. presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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To digress kidogo, If there was political goodwill (which I doubt), It would be great if EACC probed the whole process of procurement at IEBC. It seems procurement has been a wet area, where powerful crocodiles open their mouths and swallow. I don't see why Kenyan elections should be one of the most expensive in the world per capita, while it's not the most complex. On 2 April 2013 13:51, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
Aquinas,
I agree with you 110% about the "human factor" aspect of the issues with IEBC. I will take this opportunity to (re) post my piece on the human factor which I had shared a couple weeks ago.
---------------
In #140Friday over the past several days we have been discussing issues and challenges that face the implementation of IT systems, with special focus on “Public Service” IT systems. This attention has largely been triggered by the failure of Kenya’s Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Results Transmission System (RTS). Last week #140Friday had a face-to-face meeting at the Nailab which brought together a diverse group of professionals from various backgrounds to discuss the subject. As the group talked about “what went wrong” and “what could have been done better” with regards to various Public IT systems one key point that consistently came up was the importance of the human factor.
[image: godfinger]<http://140friday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/godfinger.jpg>
Most IT system implementations apply project management techniques in order to have a higher success rate, better performance management, efficient management of time and resources and better communication amongst key stakeholders. But research and experience have shown that tools, processes and analytics only show about half of the picture, the most critical (and least obvious) is what we can call the “human factor”. All projects consist of people with needs, wants, desires, issues and time constraints. This “human factor” must be addressed in order to ensure higher levels of project success.
As more details emerge about the IEBC RTS project it becomes evident that the human factor probably contribute to most, if not all of the problems that led to the projects failure. There appear to have been a number of blunders, both big as well as small which affected the entire process from beginning to end. Ranging from personal pride (or should we call it obstinacy?) amongst key members of IEBC top management, who turned away advice and offers of assistance to address problems that became evident weeks and months prior to the election.
The lack of electricity at tallying and polling stations and the failure to take appropriate measures to ensure that electronics being used had stable power supply points to poor planning and preparation. The locations where tallying and polling stations would be located were known many months prior to the elections. It would have been a simple task to allocate a team the task of ensuring that there was reliable power in each and every room that would be used for the election, unfortunately this issue was never addressed or came to the fore too late for anything meaningful to be done about it. This is a perfect example of an oversight that comes as a result of the human factor.
It has been humorously stated that all project failures have 6 phases:
1. Enthusiasm 2. Disillusionment 3. Panic 4. Search for the guilty 5. Punishment of the innocent 6. Praise and honors for the non-participants
Interestingly enough, the IEBC RTS projects seems to be going through these phases with the entire country acting as judge, jury and executioner. While all the details are still not in the public domain, it is safe to say that this particular project shall go down in the annals of Kenyan ICT history as a classic example of how *NOT* to do things.
Some recommendations on how to address human factor challenges (from Kim Resch “Using The Human Factor To Launch Products”)
*Management Buy-In*
1. The larger the project the more management support is needed 2. Get and keep management involved in the right projects at the right time – don’t wear out your welcome 3. First thing, gain the clear understanding of the manager’s highest level goals and desires 4. On a regular basis meet one-on-one with management to up-date and ask for support 5. Meet with, face-to-face, each manager of each person assigned to the project – gain commitment 6. When priorities shift re-commit with all levels of management 7. Gain outward signs of approval & support from management
*Team Dynamics*
1. Get to know each person on your team, including personal likes, interests, etc. & share about yourself too 2. Get buy-in – sell hard when necessary 3. Trust the people on your team and show them you trust them 4. Give them a chance to shine and get recognition – ‘relinquishing power’ 5. Define their strengths & weaknesses 6. Spend time explaining the importance of the project – to the bigger picture 7. Write thank-you notes and take time to have a snack/lunch with the team 8. Go out of your way to care and be personal 9. Never let family or the individual come second 10. And at the same time, push them through example and challenge them beyond what they think they can do
*Essential Communications*
1. After leadership the second most important role you will play 2. Watch for issues, build-up and possible explosions – only way to know is via talking, seeing and sharing 3. E-mail is the scourge of proper and effective communications – great for documentation, horrible for getting the right out-come 4. Communicate often with the key team members and (on larger or fast projects, do so every day), with the larger circle of members at minimum weekly 5. Utilize all forms of communications 6. Involve upper management in formal & relaxed moments 7. Restate the mission, goals, business impact, etc. 8. At start of program develop a scope document that includes the business value and the ‘why it is important’ 9. Handwrite thank-you notes along the way
*Convert Mountains into Molehills*
1. Obstacle remover 2. Work the team to bring expectations into alignment 3. Shut down gossip and trash-talk 4. Address problems head on – first to the immediate person then go up the chain 5. Clarify, define and bring into prospective 6. Feel the pain, but move beyond to the result – generate a positive outcome 7. When a person is blocking the project’s success, after attempts to correct the behavior, have them removed – nothing and no one is untouchable 8. Keep the mission visible and the end result alive 9. Don’t let scope creep & ‘fix all the ills of the business’, change the project’s desired result
*Keep spirits up*
1. Utilize recognition & incentives 2. Non-cash rewards are better 3. Both team and individual rewards & recognition 4. Reward for each milestone or important result 5. Say thank you, in writing and in group settings 6. Hold up performers 7. Hold a kick-off meeting followed up with an activity 8. Reward positive behaviors openly, handle poor behaviors privately and one-on-one (use as a learning experience) 9. Get management to ‘stop by’ performing individuals’ cubes/offices or meetings to say ‘I heard and wanted to say…’ 10. Create performance legends & stories 11. The positive spirit begins with you
*Velocity & Vision*
1. Determine upfront how much or little the specific project requires – the tools, tracking and formal processes 2. Create a vision the team can believe in, including how fast and why 3. Create a sense of urgency and action (if it can be done now then do it) 4. Important means speed – velocity only comes with a clear understanding of where you started and where you are going 5. Make it real, make it tangible 6. The pace of the leader sets the pace of the pack!
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]>wrote:
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”**. *As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
*What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.*
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [ mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day
difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT
the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one
fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced
at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of
dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it
is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <
[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank
God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
> >I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. > >http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 >8.html > > >Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) > > >Warigia > _______________________________________________ > >kictanet mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet > >Unsubscribe or change your options at >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus >sein.com > > >The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder
> >KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one. presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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Aquinas, Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017? You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system. In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012? Regards PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC? Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ________________________________ From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC. Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m). Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten. From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!). So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission
of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included
in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission
System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof
made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual
dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior
management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded
a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional
management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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Robert, I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections... Best regards, Brian On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]> wrote:
Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ------------------------------ *From:* Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”**. *As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
*What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.*
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [ mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day
difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT
the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one
fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing
with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it
is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside
from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]>
wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank
God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages. positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. that has been evident between the two principals since day one. presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 --------------------------------------------------
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Brian, I am sure even you do not buy that story, what stopped them from virtualising the server and run 6 instances of the application? Since the issue is no longer in court I believe we should be able to carry out a thorough postmortem, which is our forte, of what went wrong and how we would have mitigated in the event of a problem. A court of peers needs to be convened and all the involve ICT players in the process summoned, including Lantech & Safaricom who I believe will not need to be subpoenaed. Let us be weary of road side justification that are technologically unsound. Regards Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: robert yawe <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 16:43 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Robert, I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections... Best regards, Brian On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]> wrote: Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the
IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
________________________________ From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected]
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise,
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission
of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included
in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even
UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission
System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof
made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual
dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior
management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded
a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional
management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
--
Dr. Warigia Bowman Assistant Professor? Clinton School of Public Service University of Arkansas [email protected]
View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 --------------------------------------------------
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We are very proud of our work at IEBC. this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m). process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten. that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!). likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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Why not extend the old system then, or was it structured in a non extensible manner? Or perhaps someone just wanted something new? On Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM, "Brian Munyao Longwe" <[email protected]> wrote:
Robert,
I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections...
Best regards,
Brian
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]>wrote:
Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ------------------------------ *From:* Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”**. *As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
*What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.*
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [ mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day
difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT
the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one
fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced
at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of
dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it
is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <
[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank
God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
> >I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. > >http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 >8.html > > >Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) > > >Warigia > _______________________________________________ > >kictanet mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet > >Unsubscribe or change your options at >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus >sein.com > > >The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder
> >KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one. presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
--
Dr. Warigia Bowman Assistant Professor? Clinton School of Public Service University of Arkansas [email protected]
View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 --------------------------------------------------
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Hi Listers, Kindly widely circulate the attached job openings adverts which appeared in Daily Nation of Tuesday 2nd April, 2013. Tell the potential candidates to ensure they apply before April 19th, 2013 Pay special attention to the adverts for our North Coast Beach Hotel and the Directorate of Revenue Generation and Enterprise Development. Lets continue marching towards vision 2030. Warm regards all, CHARLES N. NDUATI DIRECTOR, REVENUE GENERATION AND ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT -KENYATTA UNIVERSITY MOBILE:254-722728815 EMIAL:[email protected],[email protected], ________________________________ From: Dennis Kioko <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 3 April 2013, 9:52 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Why not extend the old system then, or was it structured in a non extensible manner? Or perhaps someone just wanted something new? On Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM, "Brian Munyao Longwe" <[email protected]> wrote: Robert,
I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections...
Best regards,
Brian
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]> wrote:
Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
________________________________ From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected]
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation.
We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise,
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission
of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included
in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even
UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission
System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof
made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual
dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior
management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded
a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional
management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
> >I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. > >http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 >8.html > > >Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) > > >Warigia > _______________________________________________ > >kictanet mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet > >Unsubscribe or change your options at >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus >sein.com > > >The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in
> >KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
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Dr. Warigia Bowman Assistant Professor? Clinton School of Public Service University of Arkansas [email protected]
View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 --------------------------------------------------
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The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
IEBC? this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m). process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten. that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!). likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/jokilimo%40yahoo.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
@robert and @dennis, Great questions. But those answers can only come from the horses mouth. Brian On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Dennis Kioko <[email protected]> wrote:
Why not extend the old system then, or was it structured in a non extensible manner? Or perhaps someone just wanted something new? On Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM, "Brian Munyao Longwe" <[email protected]> wrote:
Robert,
I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections...
Best regards,
Brian
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]>wrote:
Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ------------------------------ *From:* Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”**. *As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
*What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.*
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [ mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting
partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day
difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may
WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in
which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses
one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced
at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and
indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of
dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it
is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a
complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <
[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga > > >Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to >the words:- > > >'...the election results show that technology has failed them.' > > >I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of
> > >I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that >technology has failed them.' with the sentence > > >'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.' > > >The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them. > > >Ali Hussein >CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd >Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd > > >+254 773/713 601113 > > >"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb > >Sent from my iPad > >On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> >>I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. >> >>http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 >>8.html >> >> >>Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) >> >> >>Warigia >> >_______________________________________________ >> >>kictanet mailing list >>[email protected] >>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet >> >>Unsubscribe or change your options at >>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus >>sein.com >> >> >>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder
>> >>KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect
a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one. presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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Listers, Until the day this country takes issues of integrity, transparency and efficiency seriously, no amount of technology will improve processes. These systems need people to operate them- people of integrity and who are God-fearing. Sounds to me like the problem needs more prayers for such people than the 'right' technology! Meanwhile, all the best in the trouble-shooting. Regards, Gilda Odera On Apr 3, 2013, at 9:52 AM, Dennis Kioko <[email protected]> wrote:
Why not extend the old system then, or was it structured in a non extensible manner? Or perhaps someone just wanted something new?
On Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM, "Brian Munyao Longwe" <[email protected]> wrote: Robert,
I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections...
Best regards,
Brian
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]> wrote: Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected]
You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.?
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country.
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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+1 Gilda Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd +254 773/713 601113 "The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb Sent from my iPad On Apr 3, 2013, at 5:26 PM, Gilda Odera <[email protected]> wrote:
Listers,
Until the day this country takes issues of integrity, transparency and efficiency seriously, no amount of technology will improve processes. These systems need people to operate them- people of integrity and who are God-fearing. Sounds to me like the problem needs more prayers for such people than the 'right' technology! Meanwhile, all the best in the trouble-shooting.
Regards,
Gilda Odera
On Apr 3, 2013, at 9:52 AM, Dennis Kioko <[email protected]> wrote:
Why not extend the old system then, or was it structured in a non extensible manner? Or perhaps someone just wanted something new?
On Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM, "Brian Munyao Longwe" <[email protected]> wrote:
Robert,
I read somewhere that the rationale behind a new procurement for the 2013 election was because the system that IEBC previously had (developed by NEXT technologies) didn't have the capability to support 6 simultaneous "races" as happened during the election, but had only been used in single "race" elections e.g. referendum, by-elections...
Best regards,
Brian
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM, robert yawe <[email protected]> wrote:
Aquinas,
Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017?
You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system.
In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012?
Regards
PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election
Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!
I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology.
The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!
Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.
Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this.
On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass.
There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about).
For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh.
Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC.
The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election.
If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m).
Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!
I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.
Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work.
An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten.
From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!).
So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.
The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen.
What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called.
I hope that this has not been a boring post.
Regards
Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer
LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
@Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this.
@ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham?
________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating:
"Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"
Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013.
Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races.
If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote:
@Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.?
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round. >________________________________ > From: kictanet >To: Dick Omondi >Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions >Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013 > >Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the >Kenyan general election of 2013 > >Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran. > > > > >On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote: > >Wariga >> >> >>Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to >>the words:- >> >> >>'...the election results show that technology has failed them.' >> >> >>I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. >> >> >>I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that >>technology has failed them.' with the sentence >> >> >>'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.' >> >> >>The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them. >> >> >>Ali Hussein >>CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd >>Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd >> >> >>+254 773/713 601113 >> >> >>"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb >> >>Sent from my iPad >> >>On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >>> >>>I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. >>> >>>http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 >>>8.html >>> >>> >>>Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) >>> >>> >>>Warigia >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>> >>>kictanet mailing list >>>[email protected] >>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet >>> >>>Unsubscribe or change your options at >>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus >>>sein.com >>> >>> >>>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. >>> >>>KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. > > >-- > >Dr. Warigia Bowman >Assistant Professor? >Clinton School of Public Service >University of Arkansas >[email protected]
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Bob, Thanks for your comments. On what the ICT fraternity should do, I don’t think we can do more than simply ask for a properly established and institutionalised IEBC devoid of vested (political) interests and leverage. I think that the thinking behind its establishment just created a lumbering monster with a layer that doesn’t really need to be there. And so decisions are mired in too much second guessing and political pandering. As I said, from my point of view, it was never about the technology systems but rather the PEOPLE and PROCESSES. And these people would have also done a lot better had they taken a good view of what technology to deploy. Again my opinion is that some of the systems they bought were an overkill and unnecessary! Some of you would be surprised to know that we never got to use some of the gear bought for the elections and could still very much be packed in their original boxes. Only thing the ICT fraternity should do now is to seek involvement and assist IEBC rationalise some of its really unnecessary technology spend and today I would start with advocating that the massive investment in the BVR and AFIS system be handed over to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Immigration & Registration of Persons Bureau) to use for the Civil Registration System. This is the exact same system that they have put out a tender for and yet we haven’t even started paying for the one procured by IEBC! So in 2017, you will have a centralised national civil register (database) and all we have to do is go to the polling stations with our IDs to vote! If we don’t do this, what IEBC will do is store this system/s away in some warehouse and wait until just near the next general election and bring them out for another round of voter registration. All that Shs. 9b stored in some warehouses in Kasarani or Industrial Area! And then at that time you will be told, mark my words, that some systems have been pilfered or that we require upgrades! On the passport and ID systems, I think you know that we are using the very old ID Card issuance system, procured way back in the early 90’s. It is very manual in its process. It is the reason we spend several billions every year just to get the card material, that paper (which is sourced from only 1 supplier) and lamination material for the ID. Try it next time you lose one, you should get issued one across the counter, not several months later and yet they have your record that you held an ID card before. We could easily have a central civil(ian) database and 3rd/4th Generation ID card issuance with the system recently procured by IEBC. Why waste this investment. Finally, I am not in a position to explain why IEBC took certain decisions, including the matter of the RTS. That is for them to explain. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: robert yawe [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 3:24 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Aquinas, Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017? You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system. In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012? Regards PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC? Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ________________________________ From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC. Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m). Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten. From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!). So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Website: www.lantech.co.ke<http://www.lantech.co.ke/> ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced.
The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference.
As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.
Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election.
Best regards,
Brian
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
@Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.
@Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.?
What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.
Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start
rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.?
Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling
station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.?
So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?
Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.
walu.
?
________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.
While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages.
A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government.
I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one.
It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.
My two cents,
Brian
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013
Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:-
'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'
I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country.
I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence
'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'
The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them.
Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd
+254 773/713 601113
"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html
Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)
Warigia
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If the "Rule of Law" applies, we all get a level playing field if we are qualified to deliver. www.kenyalaw.org/klr/fileadmin/pdfdownloads/Acts/PublicOfficerEthicsAct.pdf The President Elect mentioned this Act in a presidential debate. Something tells me, public officials may need to study it again. On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:00 PM, Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]>wrote: > Bob,**** > > ** ** > > Thanks for your comments.**** > > ** ** > > On what the ICT fraternity should do, I don’t think we can do more than > simply ask for a properly established and institutionalised IEBC devoid of > vested (political) interests and leverage. I think that the thinking behind > its establishment just created a lumbering monster with a layer that > doesn’t really need to be there. And so decisions are mired in too much > second guessing and political pandering. **** > > ** ** > > As I said, from my point of view, it was never about the technology > systems but rather the PEOPLE and PROCESSES. And these people would have > also done a lot better had they taken a good view of what technology to > deploy. Again my opinion is that some of the systems they bought were an > overkill and unnecessary! Some of you would be surprised to know that we > never got to use some of the gear bought for the elections and could still > very much be packed in their original boxes.**** > > ** ** > > Only thing the ICT fraternity should do now is to seek involvement and > assist IEBC rationalise some of its really unnecessary technology spend and > today I would start with advocating that the massive investment in the BVR > and AFIS system be handed over to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Immigration > & Registration of Persons Bureau) to use for the Civil Registration System. > This is the exact same system that they have put out a tender for and yet > we haven’t even started paying for the one procured by IEBC! So in 2017, > you will have a centralised national civil register (database) and all we > have to do is go to the polling stations with our IDs to vote! If we don’t > do this, what IEBC will do is store this system/s away in some warehouse > and wait until just near the next general election and bring them out for > another round of voter registration. All that Shs. 9b stored in some > warehouses in Kasarani or Industrial Area! And then at that time you will > be told, mark my words, that some systems have been pilfered or that we > require upgrades!**** > > ** ** > > On the passport and ID systems, I think you know that we are using the > very old ID Card issuance system, procured way back in the early 90’s. It > is very manual in its process. It is the reason we spend several billions > every year just to get the card material, that paper (which is sourced from > only 1 supplier) and lamination material for the ID. Try it next time you > lose one, you should get issued one across the counter, not several months > later and yet they have your record that you held an ID card before. We > could easily have a central civil(ian) database and 3rd/4th Generation ID > card issuance with the system recently procured by IEBC. Why waste this > investment.**** > > > Finally, I am not in a position to explain why IEBC took certain > decisions, including the matter of the RTS. That is for them to explain. * > *** > > > Regards > > Aquinas**** > > ** ** > > -----------------------------------------------------------------**** > > Aquinas Wasike**** > > Chief Executive Officer**** > > ** ** > > LANTech (Africa) Limited**** > > PO Box 6384 - 00200**** > > 11th Floor, Pension Towers**** > > Loita Street**** > > Nairobi, Kenya**** > > ** ** > > Mobile: +254 722 511120**** > > DL : +254 20 2245476**** > > Fax : +254 20 316747**** > > ** ** > > Email: [email protected]**** > > Website: www.lantech.co.ke**** > > -----------------------------------------------------------------**** > > ** ** > > *From:* robert yawe [mailto:[email protected]] > *Sent:* Tuesday, April 02, 2013 3:24 PM > *To:* Aquinas Wasike > *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions > *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: > Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election**** > > ** ** > > Aquinas, > > Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members > of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does > not happen again in 2017? > > You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the > one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to > leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come > up with a 3rd generation ID system. > > In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC > when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used > successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a > new system in November 2012? > > Regards > > PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC?**** > > ** ** > > **** > > Robert Yawe > KAY System Technologies Ltd > Phoenix House, 6th Floor > P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 > Kenya**** > > Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696**** > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 > *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: > Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election**** > > ** ** > > Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make!**** > > **** > > I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about > IEBC and Technology. **** > > **** > > The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and > process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort!**** > > **** > > Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player > around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had > no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and > performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC.**** > > **** > > Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary > tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not > need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the > BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double > registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our > previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence > catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been > caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous > and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas > and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an > attempt to avoid a repeat of this.**** > > **** > > On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I > know are also active on this list I said and I quote *“…….I must say that > IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of > Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my > personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is > currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very > frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!”* Still earlier > on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where > I said, *“…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to > scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the > level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a > classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are > just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with > this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. > We pray for Mother Kenya!”. *As it happens both my predictions have come > to pass.**** > > **** > > There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external > and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will > expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for > risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk > was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known > election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests > which was well reported about). **** > > **** > > For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May > 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter > registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar > and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then > Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And > we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they > are nigh. **** > > **** > > Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new > constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by > the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a > right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of > IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for > the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil > Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured > by IEBC.**** > > **** > > The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners > who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the > elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly > with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking > in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. > its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 > Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being > voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different > elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! > Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver > the election.**** > > **** > > If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was > discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No > clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh > voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter > registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – > US$105m). **** > > **** > > Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) > and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID > system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was > supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update > the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you > registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This > was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the > Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the > communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of > the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for > a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these > poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain!**** > > **** > > I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual > forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with.**** > > **** > > Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had > to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections > including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct > most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to > have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract > operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be > risk transference at work. **** > > **** > > An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at > the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people > working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after > (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion > would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also > recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part > of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that > these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or > password were forgotten.**** > > **** > > From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been > taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of > technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor > “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to > the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter > registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the > Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did > anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration > systems were delivered very late in the day!). **** > > **** > > So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management > practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks.**** > > **** > > The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together > all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now > discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people > tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely > did not make this happen.**** > > **** > > *What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in > information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We > must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other > departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean > civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that > should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may > be called.***** > > **** > > I hope that this has not been a boring post. **** > > **** > > Regards**** > > **** > > Aquinas**** > > -----------------------------------------------------------------**** > > Aquinas Wasike**** > > Chief Executive Officer**** > > **** > > LANTech (Africa) Limited**** > > PO Box 6384 - 00200**** > > 11th Floor, Pension Towers**** > > Loita Street**** > > Nairobi, Kenya**** > > **** > > Mobile: +254 722 511120**** > > DL : +254 20 2245476**** > > Fax : +254 20 316747**** > > **** > > Email: [email protected]**** > > Website: www.lantech.co.ke**** > > -----------------------------------------------------------------**** > > **** > > -----Original Message----- > From: kictanet [ > mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] > On Behalf Of [email protected] > Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM > To: Aquinas Wasike > Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201**** > > **** > > Send kictanet mailing list submissions to**** > > [email protected]**** > > **** > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit**** > > https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to**** > > [email protected]**** > > **** > > You can reach the person managing the list at**** > > [email protected]**** > > **** > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than > "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..."**** > > **** > > **** > > Today's Topics:**** > > **** > > 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general**** > > election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale)**** > > **** > > **** > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------**** > > **** > > Message: 1**** > > Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT)**** > > From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]>**** > > To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]>**** > > Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]>**** > > Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the*** > * > > Kenyan general election of 2013**** > > Message-ID:**** > > <[email protected]>**** > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"**** > > **** > > @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours > is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration > and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not > replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter > identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in > my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others > saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement > may shed light on this.**** > > **** > > @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several > factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 > months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to > vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over > 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in > 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the > years were never/rarely removed.**** > > ?**** > > Jotham?**** > > **** > > **** > > **** > > **** > > ________________________________**** > > From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]>**** > > To: [email protected]**** > > Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]>**** > > Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM**** > > Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan > general election of 2013**** > > **** > > **** > > **** > > Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old > wisdom stating:**** > > **** > > "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses"**** > > **** > > Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast > on March 4th, 2013.**** > > **** > > Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) > senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) > in all 3 races.**** > > **** > > If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, > 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase....**** > > **** > > **** > > **** > > **** > > On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> > wrote:**** > > **** > > @Walu**** > > >** ** > > >A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting > partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was > forced.**** > > >** ** > > >The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day > difference.**** > > >** ** > > >As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT > the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system > the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of > PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official > specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the > paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances.**** > > >** ** > > >Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in > which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything > comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the > design of future systems intended to support the election.**** > > >** ** > > >** ** > > >Best regards,**** > > >** ** > > >** ** > > >Brian**** > > >** ** > > >** ** > > >** ** > > >** ** > > >On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote:*** > * > > >** ** > > >@Brian,**** > > >>** ** > > >>Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a > coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with > us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, > Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? > Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them.**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>@Rigia,**** > > >>Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one > fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme > court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) > is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its > fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification > mechanism.?**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at > the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed > to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public > to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer > just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a > later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will > require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted > and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election > Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later.**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents **** > > >>(Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was **** > > >>countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a **** > > >>price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been **** > > >>countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel **** > > >>system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if **** > > >>the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning **** > > >>Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? **** > > >>This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai **** > > >>Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections **** > > >>:-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time *** > * > > >>(1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling **** > > >>stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown ** > ** > > >>(awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very **** > > >>intelligeny to start**** > > rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general > trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get > caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results > are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical > ones that will arrive 3days later.?**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the **** > > >>polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" **** > > >>knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and **** > > >>the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results **** > > >>Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the **** > > >>monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not ** > ** > > >>yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation ** > ** > > >>to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and **** > > >>local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's * > *** > > >>Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely **** > > >>known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results **** > > >>Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against **** > > >>fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this * > *** > > >>fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to **** > > >>compromise Agents at the Polling**** > > station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are > already "out and about" in the public domain.?**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and > indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the > elections, the Results Transmission System must work.?**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead.**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>walu.**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>?**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>________________________________**** > > >> From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]>**** > > >>To: [email protected] p**** > > >>Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]>**** > > >>Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM**** > > >>** ** > > >>Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the **** > > >>Kenyan general election of 2013**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that > people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will > make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years.**** > > >>** ** > > >>While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing > with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the > past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work > in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A > massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and > accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been > outweighed by the disadvantages.**** > > >>** ** > > >>A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it > is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various > positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior > management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and > recruiting exercises across Government.**** > > >>** ** > > >>I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside > from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy > and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica > of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension > that has been evident between the two principals since day one.**** > > >>** ** > > >>It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a > complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in > terms of setting and achieving organizational goals.**** > > >>** ** > > >>My two cents,**** > > >>** ** > > >>Brian**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> > wrote:**** > > >>** ** > > >>Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the > presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, > turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real > institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people > around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put > together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same > merry go round.**** > > >>>________________________________**** > > >>> From: kictanet**** > > >>>To: Dick Omondi**** > > >>>Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions**** > > >>>Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the **** > > >>>Kenyan general election of 2013**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran.**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>** ** > > >>>** ** > > >>>** ** > > >>>On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote: > **** > > >>>** ** > > >>>Wariga**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to ** > ** > > >>>>the words:-**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>'...the election results show that technology has failed them.'**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan > politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could > manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the > IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most > expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably > Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country.**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that **** > > >>>>technology has failed them.' with the sentence**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>'...the election results show that leadership has failed them.'**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank > God for them.**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>Ali Hussein**** > > >>>>CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd**** > > >>>>Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>+254 773/713 601113**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb** > ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>Sent from my iPad**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> > wrote:**** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>** ** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>I thought you guys might enjoy this piece.**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530** > ** > > >>>>>8.html**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-)**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>Warigia**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>_______________________________________________**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>kictanet mailing list**** > > >>>>>[email protected]**** > > >>>>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>Unsubscribe or change your options at **** > > >>>>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhus** > ** > > >>>>>sein.com**** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder > platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy > and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT > sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. > **** > > >>>>>** ** > > >>>>>KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable > behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and > bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect > privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>** ** > > >>>--**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>Dr. Warigia Bowman**** > > >>>Assistant Professor?**** > > >>>Clinton School of Public Service**** > > >>>University of Arkansas**** > > >>>[email protected]**** > > -------------------------------------------------**** > > >>>View my research on my SSRN Author page:**** > > >>>http://ssrn.com/author=1479660**** > > >>>--------------------------------------------------**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>This email and any file(s) transmitted with it are**** > > confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity > to whom they are addressed.? Unauthorised distribution, copying, use or > disclosure of the contents to any other person is prohibited.?Airtel > Networks Kenya Limited does not accept any legal liability for the contents > of this message.? If you have received this email in error please notify > the Systems Administrator, [email protected].**** > > >>>This email and any file(s) transmitted with it are**** > > confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity > to whom they are addressed.? Unauthorised distribution, copying, use or > disclosure of the contents to any other person is prohibited.?Airtel > Networks Kenya Limited does not accept any legal liability for the contents > of this message.? If you have received this email in error please notify > the Systems Administrator, [email protected].**** > > >>>_______________________________________________**** > > >>>kictanet mailing list**** > > >>>[email protected]**** > > >>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>Unsubscribe or change your options at **** > > >>>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/blongwe%40gmail** > ** > > >>>.com**** > > >>>** ** > > >>>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform > for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and > regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT > sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. > **** > > >>>** ** > > >>>KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors > online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, > share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do > not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.**** > > >>>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>_______________________________________________**** > > >>kictanet mailing list**** > > >>[email protected]**** > > >>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > >>** ** > > >>Unsubscribe or change your options at **** > > >>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/jwalu%40yahoo.co** > ** > > >>m**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform > for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and > regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT > sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. > **** > > >>** ** > > >>KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors * > *** > > >>online that you**** > > follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share > knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not > spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.**** > > >>** ** > > >>** ** > > >** ** > > >_______________________________________________**** > > >kictanet mailing list**** > > >[email protected]**** > > >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > >** ** > > >Unsubscribe or change your options at **** > > >https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/murigi.muraya%40g** > ** > > >mail.com**** > > >** ** > > >The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform > for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and > regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT > sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. > **** > > >** ** > > >KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors > online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, > share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do > not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.**** > > >** ** > > **** > > _______________________________________________**** > > kictanet mailing list**** > > [email protected]**** > > https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > **** > > Unsubscribe or change your options at > https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/jokilimo%40yahoo.com > **** > > **** > > The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform > for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and > regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT > sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. > **** > > **** > > KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors > online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, > share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do > not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.**** > > -------------- next part --------------**** > > An HTML attachment was scrubbed...**** > > URL: < > https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20130331/05bda4d7/attachment.html > >**** > > **** > > ------------------------------**** > > **** > > Subject: Digest Footer**** > > **** > > _______________________________________________**** > > kictanet mailing list**** > > [email protected]**** > > https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet**** > > **** > > **** > > ------------------------------**** > > **** > > End of kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201**** > > ********************************************* > > **** > > ** ** > > * ________________________________ ***** > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: > > This e-mail message and any attachments are intended to be received only > by persons entitled to receive the confidential information it may contain. > E-mail messages to clients of LANTech ( Africa) Limited may contain > information that is confidential and legally privileged. 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Help to IEBC. Securing Digital Democracy. University of Michigan About the Course Computer technology has transformed how we participate in democracy. The way we cast our votes, the way our votes are counted, and the way we choose who will lead are increasingly controlled by invisible computer software. Most U.S. states have adopted electronic voting, and countries around the world are starting to collect votes over the Internet. However, computerized voting raises startling security risks that are only beginning to be understood outside the research lab, from voting machine viruses that can silently change votes to the possibility that hackers in foreign countries could steal an election. This course will provide the technical background and public policy foundation that 21st century citizens need to understand the electronic voting debate. You'll learn how electronic voting and Internet voting technologies work, why they're being introduced, and what problems they aim to solve. You'll also learn about the computer- and Internet-security risks these systems face and the serious vulnerabilities that recent research has demonstrated. We'll cover widely used safeguards, checks, and balances — and why they are often inadequate. Finally, we'll see how computer technology has the potential to improve election security, if it's applied intelligently. Along the way, you'll hear stories from the lab and from the trenches on a journey that leads from Mumbai jail cells to the halls of Washington, D.C. You'll come away from this course understanding why you can be confident your own vote will count — or why you should reasonably be skeptical. https://www.coursera.org/course/digitaldemocracy ________________________________ From: Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 12:00 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Bob, Thanks for your comments. On what the ICT fraternity should do, I don’t think we can do more than simply ask for a properly established and institutionalised IEBC devoid of vested (political) interests and leverage. I think that the thinking behind its establishment just created a lumbering monster with a layer that doesn’t really need to be there. And so decisions are mired in too much second guessing and political pandering. As I said, from my point of view, it was never about the technology systems but rather the PEOPLE and PROCESSES. And these people would have also done a lot better had they taken a good view of what technology to deploy. Again my opinion is that some of the systems they bought were an overkill and unnecessary! Some of you would be surprised to know that we never got to use some of the gear bought for the elections and could still very much be packed in their original boxes. Only thing the ICT fraternity should do now is to seek involvement and assist IEBC rationalise some of its really unnecessary technology spend and today I would start with advocating that the massive investment in the BVR and AFIS system be handed over to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Immigration & Registration of Persons Bureau) to use for the Civil Registration System. This is the exact same system that they have put out a tender for and yet we haven’t even started paying for the one procured by IEBC! So in 2017, you will have a centralised national civil register (database) and all we have to do is go to the polling stations with our IDs to vote! If we don’t do this, what IEBC will do is store this system/s away in some warehouse and wait until just near the next general election and bring them out for another round of voter registration. All that Shs. 9b stored in some warehouses in Kasarani or Industrial Area! And then at that time you will be told, mark my words, that some systems have been pilfered or that we require upgrades! On the passport and ID systems, I think you know that we are using the very old ID Card issuance system, procured way back in the early 90’s. It is very manual in its process. It is the reason we spend several billions every year just to get the card material, that paper (which is sourced from only 1 supplier) and lamination material for the ID. Try it next time you lose one, you should get issued one across the counter, not several months later and yet they have your record that you held an ID card before. We could easily have a central civil(ian) database and 3rd/4th Generation ID card issuance with the system recently procured by IEBC. Why waste this investment. Finally, I am not in a position to explain why IEBC took certain decisions, including the matter of the RTS. That is for them to explain. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- From:robert yawe [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 3:24 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Aquinas, Thanks for the detailed post but what would you propose that we as members of the ICT fraternity should do to make sure that the same or worse does not happen again in 2017? You mention the ID system which to the best of my knowledge as well as the one for passports work flawlessly which means that all we need is to leverage the same for the next election, therefore there is no need to come up with a 3rd generation ID system. In closing might you be able to explain what was the logic of the IEBC when they decided to dump the electronic system that had been used successfully for the various by-elections and instead internally procure a new system in November 2012? Regards PS. Exactly what services products was Lantech providing to the IEBC? Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ________________________________ From:Aquinas Wasike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 2 April 2013, 12:36 Subject: Re: [kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 - Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general Election Forgive me for the long post that I am just about to make! I would like to chip in with my comments to the on-going discussion about IEBC and Technology. The IEBC shortfalls were not about technology. It was about people and process and the risk mitigations put around the whole effort! Some of you are aware that we were mentioned several times as a player around the technology failures. This is not to placate our position. We had no position to defend as our systems were fully and properly delivered and performed 100% to expectation. We are very proud of our work at IEBC. Yes, it was a massive IS (Information Systems) effort where literary tonnes of cash (yes, I say this with some form of sarcasm as we did not need to spend in the manner we did) was availed. The fiasco surrounding the BVR voter registration procurement (Biometric & AFIS – to avoid double registration/dead voters) has been well documented and written about. Our previous elections (2007) were marred by a resultant election violence catalysed by a claimed election fraud/theft that is said to have been caused by claims that the then manual voter registration system was porous and may have been manipulated allowing double registration in some areas and even ballot box stuffing in many others. So all this spending was in an attempt to avoid a repeat of this. On 9th November 2012 in an email conversation with some colleagues who I know are also active on this list I said and I quote “…….I must say that IEBC now remains the single largest threat to the security and safety of Kenya in the way they are managing this very sensitive matter. This is my personal opinion; it is not the opinion of LANTech (my employer) which is currently engaged in a business transaction with IEBC. I would say very frankly that their level of preparedness is appalling!” Still earlier on, on 30th October I had expressed the very same similar sentiments where I said, “…..I wonder whether IEBC will not use this as an excuse to scuttle any hope for the Kenyan Diaspora to vote. I must say that the level/state of preparedness by IEBC is shocking to say the least. It is a classic case of how not to! Some of us who are doing some work there are just shocked at how things have been left to the very last minute and with this you can be sure that a lot of stuff will fall through their fingers. We pray for Mother Kenya!”. As it happens both my predictions have come to pass. There numerous goofs were mostly self-inflicted, few others quite external and even others very expected on a project of this nature in which you will expect that they will anticipate and take corrective action or plan for risk mitigation. Let us say that the main and biggest self-inflicted risk was procuring the systems very late into the calendar of the already known election date (I will not also go into the details of vested interests which was well reported about). For example the BVR Kit should have been procured and delivered by May 2012 to allow for 90days voter registration period. In the end the voter registration was only conducted in 30days deep into the election calendar and other milestones on the calendar were equally reduced. Even then Kenyans were very eager and more than 14.5m of us registered to vote! And we must do away with this practise of registration for elections when they are nigh. Voter registrations should be a continuous exercise (as our new constitution states) and even then anybody with an ID, having registered by the Registrar of Persons (as an adult Kenyan) should by default have a right to vote. The registration of persons should not be any business of IEBC as you will see in my other discussion that I will start asking for the Ministry of Immigration to stop the current tender for the AFIS/Civil Registration systems and instead take over the systems just newly procured by IEBC. The IEBC enjoyed massive goodwill both locally and multi-lateral partners who ensured that it had all the resources (fiscal) and otherwise to run the elections. This is probably where the expectations were not matched evenly with the delivery (call it reality). It may seem that the IEBC was lacking in that other resource that may not have been anticipated or planned i.e. its human resource capacity to deliver on the expectations. The 2013 Elections were the most complicated ever with 6 different seats being voted/vied for at the same time. This was akin to running six different elections in parallel. This is a huge logistical exercise by any measure! Thus the decision and rightly so to use technology as an enabler to deliver the election. If we analyse the Technology dimension, the ICT infrastructure at IEBC was discredited and archaic having been largely inherited from the old ECK. No clean voter database existed. It had to be recreated afresh with a fresh voter registration exercise, the reason for procuring the BVR voter registration system (worth close to Kshs. 9b as reported in some circles – US$105m). Then the EVID system (Electronic Voter Identification System/poll-books) and other technology that went largely un-reported. Even though the EVID system was supposed to be leading-edge, in reality it isn’t. This was supposed to identify you at the polling station and then immediately update the database that you have indeed accessed your polling station where you registered/are supposed to vote and that you have cast your ballot. This was the “closest” we would come to electronic voting (as envisaged by the Kriegler commission) which was not possible because of the reality of the communication infrastructure challenge and the general level of literacy of the voting population which may not be at a high enough level to allow for a seamless electronic election voting. As we are all aware, these poll-books failed massively, sinking close to $40m down the drain! I would say that the risk mitigation applied was in the form of manual forms 34 & 36 that we are now familiar with. Talking about the process dimension of the election, IEBC would have had to apply a mix of in-house and external persons to conduct the elections including taking the route of sub-contracting and outsourcing to conduct most of its core mandate i.e. conducting elections. Internally it needed to have the requisite skilled people to manage the out-source/sub-contract operations while ensuring contracted services are delivered. This would be risk transference at work. An election is a massive exercise in its very nature. IEBC knew that at the election period itself, it would require close to 400,000 people working for the few days to the run-up to the elections and few days after (say a week). This is a huge logistical process and part of the discussion would have been to allow the BVR and EVID equipment suppliers to also recruit and train the head count that will be used for this period as part of the ways of managing this process. This would have probably ensured that these gadgets worked and not the excuses that the batteries failed or password were forgotten. From the above, we see that the mitigation actions that should have been taken would not only be qualitative but also quantitative. A mix of technical and social actions should have been deployed. The human factor “failed” this election and one would say that the technology integration to the whole election exercise failed except the case of the BVR Voter registration which mercifully went well/successfully and only due to the Kenyans own desire to register and not necessarily that the IEBC did anything spectacular about it (as we have seen the voter registration systems were delivered very late in the day!). So then we see the need for a hybridisation of not only the management practise but also the actions taken to mitigate the risks. The human element in the whole exercise failed to adequately weld together all the various elements to deliver a flawless election. We are now discussing that technology failed when it is actually that the people tasked with ensuring the integration of all the systems together largely did not make this happen. What I am now concerned about is what we do with this huge investment in information technology (close to US$ 150m in value). This is huge spend. We must find a way in which this investment must be deployed in other departments e.g. the Civil Registration Bureau for a complete new and clean civilian database and hence issuance of a new 3rd generation ID card that should ideally serve as your voter’s card at any time that an election may be called. I hope that this has not been a boring post. Regards Aquinas ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aquinas Wasike Chief Executive Officer LANTech (Africa) Limited PO Box 6384 - 00200 11th Floor, Pension Towers Loita Street Nairobi, Kenya Mobile: +254 722 511120 DL : +254 20 2245476 Fax : +254 20 316747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.lantech.co.ke ----------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: kictanet [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 7:05 PM To: Aquinas Wasike Subject: kictanet Digest, Vol 70, Issue 201 Send kictanet mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 (Jotham Kilimo Mwale) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Jotham Kilimo Mwale <[email protected]> To: "S.M. Muraya" <[email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" @Brian - well said in your response to @Walu and also in the article. Ours is a manual voting system, and in 2013 some processes (voter registration and identification, results transmission and tallying) were enhanced (not replaced) by deploying technology. This technology failed (voter identification and RTS) on voting day thus removing the enhancement but, in my opinion, not affecting the integrity of the manual voting system. Others saw it differently, hence the petitions. Detailed Supreme Court judgement may shed light on this. @ Muraya - the high voter turn out in 2013 can be attributed to several factors, chief among them that it was a fresh register compiled only 3 months to the election. Chances are the people who registered intended to vote and even if one accounts for natural attrition, chances of well over 90% turnout should not raise any eyebrows. This was not the situation in 2002, 2007 and 2010 when an old register was updated but the dead over the years were never/rarely removed. ? Jotham? ________________________________ From: S.M. Muraya <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Even as conspiracy theories (continue to) abound, let us note age old wisdom stating: "Every matter/case must be established by two or three witnesses" Over 3 elections/witnesses exist as to how many votes were probably cast on March 4th, 2013. Looking at Nairobi votes, (i) the presidential, (ii) governor and (iii) senator -- total votes cast were?over 1.3 million (over 72% voter turnout) in all 3 races. If voter turnout in Nairobi has averaged 50% in past elections (2002, 2007, 2010 - referendum), this was an over 40% increase.... On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> wrote: @Walu
A forced marriage is very different from a marriage between consenting partners. I venture to say that the "marriage" between Kibaki and Raila was forced. The "marriages" in this election were consensual. Night and day difference. As for the RTS system - I beg to differ. Not matter how much we may WANT the electronic system to have been there as a parallel verification system the truth (and the fact) is that RTS was merely for transmission of PROVISIONAL results (as clearly indicated in practically all official specifications for the RTS). As per the Supreme Court the real vote was the paper ballot count along with the various checks and balances. Nevertheless your reasoning is spot on in terms of one of the ways in which technology *can* be used to enhance the vote. Hopefully if anything comes out of this dialogue, some of these points will be included in the design of future systems intended to support the election. Best regards, Brian On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Walubengo J <[email protected]> wrote: @Brian,
Coalition Govt will be with us forever.?? Our current govt, Jubilee is a coalition between TNA and URP.? So expect "nusu-mkate" politics to be with us for a while and it is not necessarily a bad thing.? Even UK, Germany, Israel and many other mature democracies have these types of governments.? Perhaps we just need to learn how to manage them. @Rigia, Nice piece on the technology and election processes.? But it misses one fundamental that most analysts, legal counsel and I dare say the Supreme court may have missed.? The fact that the Results Transmission System (RTS) is not just useful in "speeding-up" the announcement of results but its fundamental and more useful role is by acting as a PARALLEL verification mechanism.? What this means is that once the tallying has been done and announced at the LOCAL Polling station, those very (Presidential) results are supposed to be instantly transmitted to the NATIONAL Level and thereof made public to the wider national community. In essence the "local" data is no longer just local but becomes "global", and any attempt to modify the same at a later stage,? by way of agreement, error or outright corruption will require a good amount of explanation. This is because what was Transmitted and displayed electronically is expected to match the physical election Forms 34 as they arrive at the National level, 2-3days later. Remember, just because all agents did sign the election documents (Form34) maybe good but it is not sufficient evidence that what was countersigned is indeed what was announced (each signatures has a price?).? It is much stronger and a better? check if what has been countersigned manually is cross-checked against another parallel system - the Results Transmission System. One may then ask, what if the RTS is also compromised? i.e. Agents collude with the Returning Officer to sends fictitious results instanteneously over the RTS?? This is unlikely to happen because as our outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki once rightly put it, you need Intelligence to rig elections :-).? Most of this "intelligence" only occurs after a period of time (1-2-3days) later when 60-70-80% of the results at various polling stations is locally? known? but remains globally or nationally unkown (awaiting physical arrival of Form36) . It will not be very intelligeny to start rigging an election, when you are yet to gather the general trend(intelligence) of the results since one can easily over-rig and get caught :-). So you can bet your salary that instantly transmitted results are likely to be more reliable/correct results as compared to the physical ones that will arrive 3days later.? Put differently "instantaneous" transmission of? results at the polling stations distributes widely what is otherwise "local" knowledge and DENIES potential election riggers the opportunity and the time to leverage on this type of intelligence. The Results Transmission System ensures that no single candidate enjoys the monopoly of local knowledge (Results at? Polling Station that are not yet in the national public domain) and thus eliminates the temptation to abuse the same to their advantage. Knowledge is indeed power and local knowledge is even more powerful - I should add.? If politician's Agents knew that Polling results were no longer "local" but widely known across the country - courtesy of the instantaneous Results Transmission System - then the temptation to sign against fictitious/edited result figures will be greatly reduced.? Indeed this fact alone, will diminish any Politician's desire to even begin to compromise Agents at the Polling station since it is futile to do so upon knowing that the Results are already "out and about" in the public domain.? So my prayer for 2017/18 is that as an ICT community, we must ask and indeed demand that IEBC ensures that as a minimum tech-input to the elections, the Results Transmission System must work.? Lets Enjoy our Easter and the Jubilee years ahead. walu. ? ________________________________ From: Brian Munyao Longwe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] p Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:11 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Since I have developed a reputation for saying the unpopular things that people think but are either too shy or too conflicted to talk about I will make a simple point that I have observed over the past few years. While the coalition government was lauded as a reasonable way of dealing with the electoral debacle that we faced in 2007, the truth is that for the past 5 years there have been some very strange and unusual dynamics at work in the operations and makeup of Government departments and agencies. A massive plus has been the much higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. But I would like to suggest that the benefits have been outweighed by the disadvantages. A good example, and one that I would like to use here is the IEBC - it is no secret that the two principals had to "share out" the various positions that needed to be filled both a commissioner as well as senior management. This has been the pattern for almost all appointments and recruiting exercises across Government. I venture to say that this approach has been counterproductive and aside from yielding teams that can work together in planning, policy, strategy and implementation within their departments/agencies has yielded a replica of the competitive, antagonistic, selfish and almost vindictive tension that has been evident between the two principals since day one. It is my sincere hope that the next government will be marked by a complete change in attitude, with more of a genuine team-based dynamic in terms of setting and achieving organizational goals. My two cents, Brian On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Dick Omondi <[email protected]> wrote: Now that we have a court decision that clears the matter of the presidency, perhaps it is now time to remove the emotions of the decision, turn away from politics and get down to the core issues in real institutional management and those surrounding the processes and the people around the IEBC lest we sit back and get through another four years and put together another unit in the last year of the 5 and go back to the same merry go round.
________________________________ From: kictanet To: Dick Omondi Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Sent: Sat Mar 30 21:40:14 2013 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013 Thank you Ali. I appreciate your comments. Shukran. On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Ali Hussein <[email protected]> wrote: Wariga
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the read. I want to however object to the words:- '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' I humbly submit that what failed us in this case is a mix of partisan politicking, a knack for jostling to see how each proponent could manipulate the process for their own benefit and lastly the failure of the IEBC leadership to accept and tell Kenyans to our faces that the most expensive technology ever bought for elections in Kenya (and Probably Africa) was designed to fail before it landed in the country. I would replace the sentence '...the election results show that technology has failed them.' with the sentence '...the election results show that leadership has failed them.' The saving grace is that we have a sober Supreme Court and we thank God for them. Ali Hussein CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd +254 773/713 601113 "The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb Sent from my iPad On Mar 29, 2013, at 11:05 PM, Warigia Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332913551936530 8.html Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) Warigia
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_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/murigi.muraya%40g mail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
kictanet mailing list [email protected] https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/jokilimo%40yahoo.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
participants (10)
-
Ali Hussein -
Aquinas Wasike -
Brian Munyao Longwe -
charles nduati -
Dennis Kioko -
Gilda Odera -
ICT Researcher -
Kivuva -
robert yawe -
S.M. Muraya