[kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?

robert yawe robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Mar 7 10:35:00 EAT 2013 

Dr. Ndemo,

Safaricom's infrastructure handles over 107,000 transactions per day on MPesa only that does not include text messages therefore in terms of capacity the blame can not rest there, if you had been proactive then IEBC could have used the Safaricom CLOUD to handle the transactions as it was full hardy of IEBC to want to implement such a complex infrastructure that was only needed for 2 days and the same applies for KNEC.

We had roughly 34,000 polling stations each sending roughly 1 kilobyte of data for each of the 6 categories so assuming that all the polling stations sent their data at exactly the same time we should have had a volume of 34,000 kilobytes or 34 megabytes

Raila                    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Uhuru                  99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Olekiyapi            99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Martha               99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Peter Kenneth     99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Dida                    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Muite                  99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999
Mudavadi            99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999    99999999

mySQL can handle over 3,000 transactions per second  using 12 threads which would mean the entire 34,000 transactions would take 12 seconds and I am sure that the machine being used by the IEBC has a cache of at least 512 megabytes therefore there would be no need for Safaricom to slow down transmission.



I will leave the calculation of the required bandwidth to transmit 34 megabytes to the geeks on the forum, it is a clear indication that the problem was elsewhere and not on the infrastructure.

This was the math that I would have expected to be going on but instead we are speculating about legal issues, please note that there is a very big difference between and electronic transmission and a machine readable transmission but what do lawyers know about IT?  Which explains why a one can only be called a learned friend if he has two degrees of which law is one which is why in India, the USA and many other countries law cannot be done as a first degree.  But in Kenya not only is that the norm but we have also gone to the level of offering journalism as a first degree.

The fall back to a manual systems is a clear reflection of where Kenya really stands as a technology enabled country.

Regards


 
Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya


Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696


________________________________
 From: "bitange at jambo.co.ke" <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
To: robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk 
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
Sent: Wednesday, 6 March 2013, 22:28
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?
 
David,
The system was bound to crash if the server capacity was not able to process multiple transactions.  This is what happened with KNEC twice. Had we outsourced processing to a large data centre like the Safaricom one, we could have finished the processing in a matter of hours.

Further, someone should have informed Safaricom that the server processing capacity could not handle huge number of transactions in which case Safaricom would have slowed the feed to allow the number of transactions it could handle.  This is like trying to pump water from a two inch pipe through a half inch pipe.  Pressure increases and eventually the pipes snap.

This is all water under the bridge now.  We now must examine the problem and avoid the mistakes in the future.

Ndemo.


Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: dmakali at yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 18:51:21 
To: <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
Reply-To: dmakali at yahoo.com
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?

Daktari, we are not talking abt the human errors of the voting process. That was manual. Rather we are interested and reviewing what happened to the IT part of the exercise! The transmission of the results did not simply fail from overload or any technical hiccup. What exactly transpired that isaack is only referring to euphemistically as "technical challenges"? 

Am sure you know that the system did not just malfunction but suffered frm manipulation. I stand to be correcyted but Can a system trigger itself to generate results and alter its data transmission  logs? Lets just say all of us are being patriotic and acting in the national interest at this time but sm1 should not think we are fooled. The truth will sooner than later become apparent.

But i truly appreciate your contribution.
- Makali 

Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: bitange at jambo.co.ke
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 18:23:33 
To: <dmakali at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: bitange at jambo.co.ke
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?

David,
A lot has been said in the social media trying to advance different theories of. Why the systems failed  but what will matter are the final vote count. These were just provisional results that were to be verified before announcing the winner and were to be transmitted within a given time.  Electronic results were to be like exit polls.  There were human errors that should not have happened.  Look at the number of spoilt votes.  Can we say it was sabotage?

Ndemo.
  


Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: dmakali at yahoo.com
Sender: "kictanet" <kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke>Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 17:45:13 
To: <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
Reply-To: dmakali at yahoo.com
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?

Why is this being addressed as IT "failure" and not "sabotage"?. I would think failure is when a system "fails" to function according to its intended or programmed purpose and not when its "functioning" is interfered with so as to derail it from performing the set task.



Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: Edith Adera <eadera at idrc.ca>
Sender: "kictanet" <kictanet-bounces+dmakali=yahoo.com at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 17:10:13 
To: <dmakali at yahoo.com>
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has the ICT Sector Failed?

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