<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Thanks for the clarification.<div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 31 Dec 2016, at 13:20, <a href="mailto:kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke" class="">kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Send kictanet mailing list submissions to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke" class="">kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke</a><br class=""><br class="">To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<br class="">or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke<br class=""><br class="">You can reach the person managing the list at<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>kictanet-owner@lists.kictanet.or.ke<br class=""><br class="">When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br class="">than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..."<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Today's Topics:<br class=""><br class=""> 1. Re: Manual Backup and Elections 2017: Is the CS ICT Honest<br class=""> (Collins Areba)<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 1<br class="">Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2016 13:18:35 +0300<br class="">From: Collins Areba <arebacollins@gmail.com><br class="">To: Waithaka Ngigi <ngigi@at.co.ke><br class="">Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>,<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>JImmy Gitonga <jimmygitts@gmail.com><br class="">Subject: Re: [kictanet] Manual Backup and Elections 2017: Is the CS<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>ICT Honest<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAFb6RxBu3x2jTrk8FYeyNA2=13EOaVB3R3ohzjm_WvomV6d6QA@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">Listers,<br class="">Allow me to share these wise words from a friend, Ben Ngumi Chege, who has<br class="">had extensive on the field doing exactly this kind of work in more places<br class="">than I can remember. Will paste the long text after the link in case its<br class="">not visible to everyone.<br class=""><br class="">https://web.facebook.com/notes/ben-chege/manual-vs-electronic-elections/10154910551733923?__mref=message_bubble<br class=""><br class="">?Manual? vs ?Electronic? Elections<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">BEN CHEGE <https://web.facebook.com/masukuma>?FRIDAY, 30 DECEMBER 2016<br class=""><https://web.facebook.com/notes/ben-chege/manual-vs-electronic-elections/10154910551733923><br class="">Every 5 years Kenyans queue to vote, this is an exercise that we have<br class="">engaged in passionately for as long as I can remember and when each round<br class="">of elections is done and dusted we as a nation learn a couple of lessons<br class="">which we then reuse in succeeding election cycles in an attempt to make<br class="">them better. However, looking at the current debate on the use of<br class="">technology and witnessing what is happening, I suspect that there might<br class="">have been an important lesson to be learnt in the 2007-08 when compared to<br class="">the 2013 election cycle that has been missed and this lesson is that Having<br class="">consensus among all players beforehand regarding the electoral process<br class="">generally leads to widespread acceptance of the results of the process.<br class="">Electoral process should be seen as contests, where groups of people with<br class="">various interests engage willingly in order to not only determine political<br class="">representation but also wield the power of the state, and just like any<br class="">reputable contest it has its rules. These rules are well known and<br class="">understood by all players and are accepted from the onset. These rules are<br class="">deterministic in that they are predictable and must be seen by all parties<br class="">to be fair. For a country to have a credible election - we need everyone to<br class="">feel like they have a chance in this contest since from the onset the rules<br class="">of the game do not favour their opponent(s).<br class="">In 2007 ODM did not agree to the way the commissioners were picked after<br class="">the terms of some expired as they felt it contravened the IPPG agreement<br class="">and after the contest was done they did not accept the results announced by<br class="">the commission. When the same commission asked them they refused! We all<br class="">remember the situation the country found itself after the opposition<br class="">refused to engage in a process they felt was flawed and disadvantageous to<br class="">them. The 2017 election process is slowly mirroring the 2007 pre-election<br class="">period especially when it comes to the role of technology on voting day. We<br class="">are witnessing an emotive debate regarding the use of technology and the<br class="">disregard of the voices of political players who hold contrary opinions. If<br class="">lessons from the past hold true, this threatens the expectation of a<br class="">peaceful electoral process and at the very least a credible one.<br class="">On voting day there are 4 core activities that happen within a polling<br class="">station, these are:<br class="">1) Voter identification/Verification ? this answers the question ? ?Are<br class="">you registered to vote in this polling station??<br class="">2) Voting by secret ballot ? you are given a ballot paper and then you<br class="">mark it in secret and the cast the said ballot into a transparent ballot<br class="">box.<br class="">3) Counting of results and declaration ? counting of all votes cast in the<br class="">polling station for each race and the declaration of the votes cast in<br class="">favour of each candidate.<br class="">4) Results transmission ? forwarding these results to the next level<br class="">namely the constituency tally center for ?tallying? and dispute resolution<br class="">just in case there were any.<br class="">The ?Manual? vs ?Electronic? debate is really touching on activities 1)<br class="">and 4) and therefore at the core of this debate are 2 questions namely:<br class="">1) Can we solely verify/identify voters electronically using biometrics<br class="">that they submitted?<br class="">2) Can we solely transmit results to the next level using electronic means?<br class="">Fortunately, these two are not really new initiatives as the IEBC has been<br class="">using technology in these two areas over the last 4 years. No one doubts<br class="">the credibility boost that well executed technology has on elections. An<br class="">example of this is the by-election in Kibwezi West where the winner won the<br class="">race by the narrowest of margins - a paltry 175 votes and the loser did not<br class="">file a petition challenging the results. This was unheard of in previous<br class="">elections.<br class="">Why then do we have a debate around it? Previously, the use of technology<br class="">was not explicitly dictated by the Elections Act but rather the stipulation<br class="">to use one form of it was found in regulations. Until now the official<br class="">Electoral process has been manual where technology had been added for<br class="">efficiency and confidence building. The latest Election Amendment Act 2016<br class="">has raised the profile of the said technologies from just being tools to be<br class="">used in boosting confidence to be the exclusive means of conducting voter<br class="">identification and results transmission.<br class="">They say once stung ? twice shy and thus it?s understandable that the IEBC<br class="">is jittery in embracing technology full throttle without a fallback<br class="">especially because it had technology failures in the said areas during the<br class="">2013 General elections. Technology is playing an increasing role in our<br class="">lives and for us to move forward on the electoral field - I feel that this<br class="">discussion needs to be informed by a mindset from big technology companies<br class="">have when it comes to failure. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook<br class="">plan for failure more than they plan for success. They have a culture that<br class="">says ?failure is OK?, a culture where people are encouraged to ask:<br class="">1) What do we do if our technology fails?<br class="">2) How do we continue fulfilling our core business that is serving our<br class="">customers and users when the systems around us fail?<br class="">So as Kenyans we need to ask ourselves the same set of questions and ask<br class="">how it affects the core business of elections. But for that to happen we<br class="">need to synthesize what our core business on election day is. It?s said<br class="">that ?Election Day is still the one day when we strive to give equal<br class="">voice to every eligible voter; the day when the woman working in the market<br class="">stall has as much of a say as any wealthy banker, and the illiterate menial<br class="">laborer has a voice that speaks as eloquently as any university professor.<br class="">It is our shared responsibility to strive for processes and systems that<br class="">ensure that every voter is given the opportunity to make their will known,<br class="">and that every vote is counted.? If we agree that this is the core<br class="">business of elections and everything on election day must support this, we<br class="">should ask ourselves a couple of questions, namely:<br class="">1) What happens WHEN we place a piece of technology as a prerequisite to<br class="">the recording of this voice and the said technology fails and thus affects<br class="">the ?core business?? What are the fallbacks available to us?<br class="">2) Since this is a contest, which out of the array of fallbacks available<br class="">is most acceptable to all players?<br class="">The issues around the failure of technology have been well documented. The<br class="">IEBC conducted an internal audit of the March 2013 election and rather<br class="">candidly highlighted these failures. I will try and address them and<br class="">possibly give recommendations in question form that should advise our<br class="">choice of an acceptable fallback or perhaps a list of fallbacks to be<br class="">executed in when certain scenarios playout. When it came to the<br class="">identification of voters electronically, the issues fell broadly into 3<br class="">categories namely:<br class="">1) Technology problems ? some voters could not be found on some EVIDs but<br class="">were present on the manual register. Some devices run out of power, some<br class="">even exploded during charging<br class="">2) Procurement problems ? getting the wrong device because procurement<br class="">requirements were not met.<br class="">3) Rollout problems ? some devices were not charged, insufficient training<br class="">due to late delivery and lack of manuals e.t.c.<br class="">With proper planning and time to go through the procurement procedures<br class="">most of these can be sorted out. The new Elections amendment act stipulates<br class="">that the IEBC should have procured and set in place technology 8 months to<br class="">an election and then have it tested 60 days to an election. Even with this<br class="">in place some of the problems categorized as ?Technology problems? may not<br class="">disappear or may only manifest themselves on polling day. In order to<br class="">address them we need to ask ourselves what are the real risk factors<br class="">related to technology? If the approach to voter verification is similar to<br class="">what was employed in 2013 ? then the disruption of telecommunication is not<br class="">a potential failure point ? why? The devices were self-contained ? the<br class="">register was loaded on the device and thus the device really had no need to<br class="">communicate with external systems after rollout. If this is the model<br class="">envisaged in the new KIEMs Rollout ? we should not concern ourselves with<br class="">telecommunication availability in the matters of voter verification. What<br class="">should concern us is the issue of availability of power as the devices will<br class="">be constantly in use throughout the day. The devices used for verification<br class="">conduct a one-to-one match of voters against their biometrics ?<br class="">computationally ? it can be a costly affair especially if a potential voter<br class="">has to submit multiple fingers to get identified if one fails and so we<br class="">need to have devices that can work for 18 hours or have capability to<br class="">accept external power in the form of portable power cells. Can the software<br class="">be written in such a way that it alerts the users well beforehand that it<br class="">has X number of hours of charge left and that the clerks at the polling<br class="">station need to make arrangement to keep the electronic means working?<br class="">Ghana deployed a solution that utilized dry cells and they put in place an<br class="">operational plan to replace them within 4 hours.<br class="">The issue of some voters not being found on the EVIDs yet being found on<br class="">the manual roll was puzzling, this may be aggravated in 2017 this is<br class="">because the bulk of the current set of fingerprints were collected in 2013<br class="">and it will not be farfetched to expect that the quality of fingerprints<br class="">submitted for verification in this election cycle by an eligible voter who<br class="">work with their hands to be lower and thus this may require multiple<br class="">passes. The current setup is one which a subset of the fingerprints<br class="">collected is used to verify voters electronically. If we are to go full<br class="">throttle ? we will need to ensure that all fingerprints are available for<br class="">matching on polling day to increase the chances of matching. An exercise to<br class="">get fingerprints resubmitted for persons who fall in this category and also<br class="">for all those that had their biometrics lost during the mass registration<br class="">drive when BVR machines crashed and did not have backed up properly.<br class="">Another reason that could explain why some voters were not found on the<br class="">EVIDs and were found on the printed register is data corruption during<br class="">copying polling station data into the SD cards that the devices used. How<br class="">can we ensure that databases are not corrupted during saving into the<br class="">machines? I propose that each device should have a way of hashing a file<br class="">and checking the hash against a verified hash of a working copy and where<br class="">it differs transferring data to this device should be repeated. Backups of<br class="">these registers on verified SD cards should also accompany each EVID to the<br class="">field. We should explore how to keep the logs of the persons who have voted<br class="">safe when devices get technology issues. There is also an inconvenient<br class="">reality that in any given population there will always be some persons<br class="">whose fingerprints are difficult or impossible to capture or verify. This<br class="">raises a fundamental ideological question of whether a person should be<br class="">disenfranchised because of limitations of a technology.<br class="">The issues around the provisional transmission of results were also well<br class="">documented, these also fell into 3 broad categories namely:<br class="">1) Technology problems ? the server?s well documented issue with system<br class="">logs and it running out of space due to server misconfiguration; The<br class="">failover issues that followed this. Network coverage issues; Erroneous<br class="">display of tallied votes due to late integration and limited retesting.<br class="">2) Procurement/Acquisition problems ? there was no time to really develop<br class="">the transmission application.<br class="">3) Rollout problems ? late delivery of phones and specially configured<br class="">simcards; issues with user credentials; versioning issues between server<br class="">and phone; Lack of proper training.<br class="">As with electronic voter identification, most of these can be sorted out<br class="">with proper planning and following procedures, why do I say so? the IEBC<br class="">has transmitted 100% of the results from all the by-elections that it has<br class="">conducted since 2013. While in terms of scale these by-elections pale when<br class="">compared to the general election, it?s my considered opinion that there<br class="">have been numerous lessons learnt ? these can be documented and used to<br class="">inform the training and rollout process.<br class="">What should happen in the event that result transmission fails for<br class="">whatever reason? The IEBC still needs to have a fallback for electronic<br class="">results transmission. Can some other technology offer a fallback? e.g. If<br class="">results transmission from a primary device fails, should we have an<br class="">electronic fallback using a different technology? Can the current election<br class="">transmission system be used as a backup of whatever fancy results<br class="">transmission system the IEBC procures? The IEBC has used satellite phones<br class="">with success to transmit results for the Kalolol and Mosiro by-elections,<br class="">why can this be used as a fallback on the telecommunication side. I think<br class="">we can have all these fallbacks in place and these would be totally<br class="">acceptable to all stakeholders.<br class="">These questions are by no means comprehensive but should act as a starting<br class="">point in deciding what the fallback(s) should be and when to fallback. It<br class="">has always been my opinion that leaving the determination of important<br class="">electoral matters at the polling station level to the discretion of people<br class="">there without a trail of documentation that guides their decision making<br class="">and a trail of accountability to why they took the action they did exposes<br class="">the election operation to credibility questions. In 2012 Ghana went into<br class="">their election with the NVNV (No [biometric] Verification, No Voting)<br class="">mantra and they had to extend the voting period and also had many people<br class="">disenfranchised because of the inadequacies of the technology they rolled<br class="">out. In 2015 they rolled back and then introduced a manual verification<br class="">fallback. The manual verification process required the presiding officer<br class="">fill a manual verification form for each voter who is manually verified.<br class="">The only way we can come up with this list of scenarios is if we carried<br class="">out a proper and candid risk assessment and management process. This<br class="">process should inform the IEBC on what to do to ensure that the ?core<br class="">business? on election day remains unaffected. From my perspective, human<br class="">beings should always play the role of final "exception handlers" to ensure<br class="">that during electronic voter identification no voter is ever<br class="">disenfranchised by technology malfunction or it?s limitation. Indeed, if<br class="">the electoral process must err, then it must err on the side of inclusion.<br class="">However, these errors must be accounted for and thus the most appropriate<br class="">role of technology is to ensure a level of transparency and accountability<br class="">that allows for review of any of those human decisions on how to handle<br class="">exceptions. As noted earlier on this paper, the process used for<br class="">verification involves a one-to-one match of voters against their<br class="">biometrics. The voter gets his ID No. captured by the verification device<br class="">in a bid to ?identify? them and once their records are loaded on the screen<br class="">of the device an additional fingerprint scan is required to ?verify? this<br class="">person. i.e. answering the question ? are you really the person who you<br class="">claim to be? So, for example, if the validation device is unable to verify<br class="">the fingerprint of a voter who the presiding officer knows or strongly<br class="">believes to be a legitimate voter, and his/her particulars are on the voter<br class="">register, the presiding officer should have the authority to override the<br class="">device and allow the person to vote. In order to trigger the manual<br class="">verification process, the presiding officer should collect as much<br class="">information about the person being excluded from being electronically<br class="">verified as possible. This information should include a photo of this<br class="">person and the Serial Number not ID No. found on their National Identity<br class="">card. Manual verification should not be misconstrued to mean manual<br class="">verification using the physically printed out register or green books. This<br class="">process should be endorsed by all party agents present at the polling<br class="">station. It is important to have this information both in physical and<br class="">electronic form. At the end of the day, any final reconciliation should<br class="">include the number of decisions the presiding officer made contrary to the<br class="">technology. This allows for review of the decisions of the presiding<br class="">officer, and provides a deterrent since that officer knows that there will<br class="">be an accounting of how many decisions he made of this nature. It also<br class="">allows for reporting on anomalies where a polling station or ward has an<br class="">inordinately high number of human exceptions. This information can be<br class="">transmitted periodically so that during the course of the day to all<br class="">stakeholders and thus all players are able to identify polling stations<br class="">that have inordinately high numbers of human exceptions and vigilance can<br class="">be increased to ensure only legitimate cases are excluded from electronic<br class="">verification.<br class="">Once this discussion has been held and we have a product that this has the<br class="">blessing of all players contesting in the election. When accepted by all<br class="">stakeholders the post-election process of massaging bruised egos and<br class="">selling peace i.e. the 'accept and move on' message will be much easier.<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20161231/1a48c4c5/attachment.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Subject: Digest Footer<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">kictanet mailing list<br class="">kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<br class="">https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">End of kictanet Digest, Vol 115, Issue 190<br class="">******************************************<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Dennis Muthuri Mburugu</div><div class="">Skype: dennis.muthuri | Tel: +(254)714590654</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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