[kictanet] Tech Spectator Syndrome ?

Wed Mar 13 09:04:37 EAT 2013

Why is there speculation and trickling of information? Aren't the details
of procurement a public affair? I thought only the Defense department was
allowed to be secretive about buying boilers?
I recall someone inviting hackers to have their go at the IEBC systems, did
anyone try to penetrate and I assume they must have had some sort of access
to it.

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Rad! <conradakunga at gmail.com> wrote:

> Which in itself should raise alarm bells.
>
> IEBC's competence is conducting elections and not developing software.
> That is as peculiar as staff who run a nuclear reactor deciding they can
> build one themselves.
>
> Why did they take such a risky decision? And who approved it?
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 12, 2013, Brian Munyao Longwe wrote:
>
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> For the little bits and pieces of information that keep trickling out, it
>> appears that a company called "Next Technologies" bid and won. This is the
>> company that had previously provided the system that handled various
>> by-elections and the referendum for the new constitution. They never got
>> round to implementation because IEBC decided to do the RTS development
>> in-house and called on Next for support as an external contractor.
>>
>> So in this case I guess we could (sort of) say that "they" is IEBC's IT
>> team. But having said that, we are not absolved from the responsibility of
>> being as much a part of the process so that instead of being retrospective
>> we can be proactive.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Brian
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 7:08 PM, Sam Gichuru <gichuru at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Please allow me to post this as a new thread...
>>>
>>> Added - My concern has been our reactions to the IEBC system failure, I
>>> applaud the doers in this country, I applaud those who bid and lost and
>>> those who won the contract to implement the system, I applaud them for
>>> their failure which means we are still alive and crawling but we will soon
>>> learn to talk and say baba and mama as the tech industry in Kenya, but my
>>> major concern is the rest of us...
>>>
>>> What I am seeing and I stand to be corrected is the spectator syndrome,
>>> when everything is ok and the international press highlight Kenya as a tech
>>> destination, Mpesa is praised, Ushahidi and startups with all our Mvitus,
>>> we celebrate, claim our team (#teamtech/ICT) is winning and write long blog
>>> posts and gazillion tweets etc
>>>
>>> This only last as long as nothing goes wrong, but when it does, suddenly
>>> the conversation changes from "we" to "them", they have failed, they dint
>>> consult, they dint test, they... not us. This is what most football
>>> fans/Spectators do, they love their football team only when its winning,
>>> which basically makes one wonder are we players or are we fans of this game?
>>>
>>> But to bring this home, we have a bigger problem, if this community
>>> started asking about the procurement process, the system architect and the
>>> companies that were selected to implement  the IEBC system only after it
>>> failed, we are not engaging enough, are we saying that nobody in this list
>>> bid for this system? nobody tried? ... doesn't that mean we are just
>>> talking ..... and talk is cheap.
>>>
>>> I would like to challenge the community to engage more with an aim to
>>> problem solve, to tender and bid for local contracts, to build more open
>>> source solutions, to fundraise with an aim to seed fund startups, if we
>>> dont... we are going to be running around in circles and then move to
>>> Rwanda and guess what we will all say ..... they dint do xyz...
>>>
>>>
>>> Let ask Ourselves ... who is they?
>>>
>>> PS: I will stick to shorter posts in the future :)
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Warm Regards,
>>> ------------------------
>>> Sam Gichuru
>>>
>>>
>>> twitter: | @samgichuru <http://twitter.com/samgichuru>
>>> Blog: |  www.samgichuru.com
>>> Facebook: | Sam.gichuru <http://www.facebook.com/sam.gichuru>
>>> Skype: Sam.gichuru
>>> Cellphone: | +254-722-730565
>>>
>>> Co-founder/ Director /Nailab Incubation
>>> Location: | Nairobi
>>> Website: | www.nailab.co.ke
>>> twitter: | @thenailab
>>>
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>>
>>
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> 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.
>

-- 
Regards,

Mark Mwangi

markmwangi.me.ke
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