[kictanet] Opinion Technology, transparency, and the Kenyan general election of 2013

Sun Mar 31 12:52:32 EAT 2013

@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 toleverage 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 <blongwe at gmail.com>
To: jwalu at yahoo.com p
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
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 <Dick.Omondi at ke.airtel.com> 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 <ali at hussein.me.ke> 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 <warigia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>I thought you guys might enjoy this piece. 
>>>
>>>http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013329135519365308.html
>>>
>>>
>>>Take a look, and tell me what you think. :-) 
>>>
>>>
>>>Warigia
>>>
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>
>-- 
>
>Dr. Warigia Bowman
>Assistant Professor 
>Clinton School of Public Service
>University of Arkansas
>wbowman at clintonschool.uasys.edu------------------------------------------------- 
>View my research on my SSRN Author page: 
>http://ssrn.com/author=1479660 
>-------------------------------------------------- 
>
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