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

Sun Mar 31 14:19:31 EAT 2013

Good point @walu.

It is also prudent to announce emmidietly after the elections exit
polls of how many people voted. This will also strengthen the output
of the RTS. In the concluded elections, IEBC announced a voter turnout
of 70% on the night of the elections, but two days later, the turnout
metamorphosised to 85% (I might be wrong). The end result will avoid
vote stuffing as you have put it.

Regards

On 31/03/2013, Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com> wrote:
> @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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> people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
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> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
>
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> online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth,
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