[kictanet] Kenya's new registry system

[wesley kiriinya]

I got this from yesterday's Daily Nation on the web. Please read:

http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=125048

I appreciate the problems this is trying to solve.

My issues are:
1. Security and confidentiallity: Hackers LOVE these sort of systems. Personal Information of about 35 million Kenyans will be sitting on a server somewhere. And the public being able to access their information remotely. Some Pentagon computers (U.S Pentagon) have been hacked, and it's claimed it was done from China. There is also a country in Asia whose IT systems were crippled from an attack coz it's said they took down a statue that had a significant meaning for another country. This system needs the attention of National Security which I assume has a bunch of IT gurus.

2. Consultations: I'm not sure whether the wider ICT community has been consulted on this. If not then I'm worried that the gvmnt would take up such a project without at least letting as many Kenyans as possible know since it's their biometric and other personal information that might be stored in the system. From what I have read the decision seems to have already been made.

3. Integration with other systems: I've read that KEBS is reconstituting TCs (Technical Committees) and I think one of the TCs deals with exchange of information between systems. I'm guessing that at some point in the future this system might be intergrated with e.g. financial institutions. Will it integrate with already existing infrastructure and what happens when IT infrastructure changes? If this base/foundation has not been set up then how will the system stand. It's not difficult to see various IT conflicts that may arise in the years to come. Kenya should take its time to create standards (and use them!) which will determine what is accepted/rejected. For anyone who develops software on a medium to large scale you know the value of a proper architecture and design before actually programming the system ( and programming is usually less than 20% of total software development time). 

BTW: If you mix point 1 and 3 above then issues become even more comlplex.

I think this is an interesting project and I'm not saying the particular system from that consortium has problems. I think there should be a proper document with technical details about this, and it should be released to the public for scrutiny. The document should details everything about the system and how it aims to solves the problems it's claiming to solve.

Is there a country with this sort of system? If this newspaper article is all the public info available then one can't answer the question because one doesn't know exactly what the system will do and how it will do it.


      
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