[kictanet] KCSE

[Evans Ikua]

Dear all,
I think this is a good time to reflect on the use of Open Source  
especially in our public institutions. If we were to take a peek at  
the program (I heard on NTV that the program was done on COBOL), I  
wonder how much we can be able to learn from that mistake, so that it  
does not happen again elsewhere. This is how open source works.

As a nation, its not right to have our critical information resources  
running on systems which we cannot tell what is happening in the  
background. How can we tell that windows is not collecting info on our  
systems and relaying the same to the FBI?


-- 
Evans Ikua
Chairman
Linux Professional Association of Kenya
Tel: 20-250381, Cell: 0722 955 831
Eagle House, 2nd Floor
Kimathi Street, Opp. Corner House
www.lpakenya.org


Quoting Benjamin Makai <benmakai at yahoo.com>:

> Dr Ndemo et others
>
>   All it takes for a to a program to fuction properly whereas it   
> could be having bugs or mistakes or ommissions in what it is   
> executing or eventually produces could be a comma, fullstop or other  
>  parameters of which the system or the program recognizes as valid.   
> This is not new thing world over and programmers will agree with me   
> on this unless otherwise ( politiking, unrealism etc).
>
>   I guess the key thing is controls in this case, be they automated   
> or manual. And other than much fuss on the issue, the examination   
> board should be guided by the appropriate authorites and experts on   
> essence of controls which could either be detective, preventive   
> etc...Walu can elaborate further and the issue comes to a rest in   
> future.
>
>   If anything, i have heard of employees or even suppliers getting   
> double pay out of a similar program issue in top notch organizations  
>  but the incidences are always maanged and reversed and at the same   
> time lessons are learned and workaround or solutions for future   
> incidences mitigation or solving can be documented. The cause of the  
>  whole saga could be neglect, sabottage, fraud, or even an attach to  
>  the system and  all those can be classified as computer related   
> error without having to go into FBI investigative issues nity grities.
>
>   Let us give the examination council  a chance in future and peace   
> of mind and at the same time the concerned to help them come up with  
>  robust systems which serves all sitting candindates in any exam   
> fairly and proffessionally. It is  true that  the affected were   
> traumatized by the incidence but i guess it has been addressed.
>
>   My advice: Controls...Controls , thats why best practices dictates  
>  having test environments before anything is moved to live   
> environment..Broadcasting was just by passing the test enviroment .   
> Who knows ,may be the test environment lacked controls hence this   
> couldn't be detected.
>
>   My thoughts....
>
>
>   Regards
>
> bitange at jambo.co.ke wrote:
>   Dear All,
> My earlier e-mail to Aduda has elisted direct questions as to how the
> programing error could have occured. Usually errors such as the one
> explained by the Minister occur during Data Mining.
>
> Researchers generally define data mining (sometimes called data or
> knowledge discovery) as the process of analyzing data from different
> perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that
> can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software
> is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users
> to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it,
> and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is
> the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in
> large relational databases like KCSE.
>
> Data does not automatically become information unless it is mined properly.
>
>
> Ndemo
>
>
>
>
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