{{In Kenya, a local Information Technology (IT) firm, Next Technology, has produced an audit report that provides never-heard-before detailed insights into the many things that went wrong during the March 4, General Election.}}
The Next Technologies report on the collapse of the electronic results transmission system during last month’s elections is the first independent account of the failures on a national scale.
In a report that reads like a sensational catalogue of things not-to-do, Next Technologies details the failures starting from the national tallying centre at Bomas in Nairobi to the polling centres in the various counties.
The report says that IEBC’s computer system was incomplete and untested before the elections that were marred by the catastrophic failure to transmit results electronically, according to a technical report just released.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) contracted NEXT Technologies to carry out an assessment and provide national IT support to for the elections.
The sheer lack of preparedness is revealed in the report that noted that one of the two main servers required for the elections was not installed until a day before the election and it was therefore not tested.
{{Faulty equipment}}
The report’s findings paint the picture of an overwhelmed IEBC desperately struggling with technology in the final hours ahead of the election and its field staff — many untrained or ill-equipped for the task — oblivious of the technological nightmare that awaited them on March 4.
“It is the view of this completion report based on observations during the first round of the elections that the development of the system was incomplete by the time of election,” reads the report.
The report adds: “This can be attributed to the noted system behaviour characterised by the different system components which were intended to function as a whole seeming to have been functioning in isolation which led to the system being unstable and unable to fulfil user requirements especially in the transmission of the bulk of the results.”
readmore..http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000081518&story_title=Kenya–IT-audit-report-reveals-what-went-wrong-in-the-polls
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