[kictanet] Invitation to Participate in ' Talk to IEBC'

[Benson Muite]

On 7/14/22 13:30, A Mutheu via KICTANet wrote:
> *SERVERS*:
> Our servers are more than 3 years old and so would need an upgrade as a 
> norm. Has such an upgrade been effected? The voter numbers have 
> increased and so will the current servers have adequate capacity? If 
> they lack capacity then at this eleventh hour when it is too late to 
> order in others, then perhaps we need to look for other solutions as a 
> matter of urgency for example, taking into account Data Protection 
> considerations, IEBC can look into borrowing capacity from other major 
> government servers that hold sensitive information as a norm, assuming 
> they have extra capacity, like KRA or CBK?
>
It appears that forms.iebc.or.ke is on Amazon S3.  Making this data 
available increases transparency.  The information on these forms seems 
to be public, though publishing a hash of the files to confirm integrity 
would be useful.  Some of the forms have returning officer id numbers. 
My expectation would have been that the name, and possibly a telephone 
number for the returning officer would be publicly visible, but not the 
id number.  My hope is that servers holding confidential information are 
not in the public cloud.

> 
> *OCR (OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION) TECHNOLOGY*:
> As far as I am aware IEBC does not have OCR technology or do they? If 
> they do not then for aggregation purposes this will have to be done 
> manually and human error can arise (both accidental or intentional), as 
> this is always a risk where the human factor is a component. If this is 
> the status quo then what measures has IEBC put in place to secure this 
> process?
This is something that IEBC should invest in more. A paper audit trail 
is important, but OCR would allow speed up in tabulation.
https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-technology
Tools such as:
https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR
https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract
can help in processing A forms, and non machine readable uploads of B 
forms. Those with technical skills and interest in the election process 
will have already automated the processing of 34A forms. Nevertheless, 
the dataset should prove useful for those interested in computer vision:
http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2020/reports/38792124.pdf
> 

> 
> *CIVIC EDUCATION AND REGULAR UPDATES EVEN ON THE IEBC WEBSITES*:
> IEBC has not been aggressive in much needed civic education to sensitize 
> and update the public on the GE and even their website can be better 
> utilized. In all of this accessibility of information to the differently 
> abled is an important factor and their democratic right. How has IEBC 
> addressed this? Even on election day what steps have been put in place 
> to protect the privacy of the differently abled but enable them to 
> exercise their democratic right fairly?
The updates for forms other than 34 are slow/non-existent.  Media 
coverage is incomplete.  By making forms 34 available, this has allowed 
the general public to do their own tallying, with the understanding that 
verification is still needed.  This seems to have increased confidence 
in the process. Hopefully, the numbers on the other forms will also be 
made available.
> 
>
> 
> IEBC needs to realize that with great power like they have, comes great 
> responsibility to uphold the democratic rights of Kenyans to fair and 
> free elections, and not allow technological issues that are resolvable 
> to curtail this right again.
> 
> Stay happy,
> 
> *Mutheu Khimulu*
> *LLM. Cybersecurity, Counter Terrorism & Crisis Management*
> *https://www.linkedin.com/in/mutheu-khimulu-law/ 
> <https://www.linkedin.com/in/mutheu-khimulu-law/> *
> 
>