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

[A Mutheu]

Dear Benson,

Your insights are noted with appreciation.

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/>*

On Sun, Aug 14, 2022 at 10:19 PM Benson Muite via KICTANet <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> 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/> *
> >
> >
>
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