IEBC not prepared to conduct electronic polls, legislators find
An Independent Boundaries and Election Commission (IEBC) official registers a voter on February 20, 2016 at Olkalou town in Nyandarua County. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Team found nearly half of BVR kits procured before 2013 polls had completely broken down.
- The Results Transmission System (RTS) had totally failed, the committee established.
- The Joint Select Committee is expected to have a busy week, a period they are calling a “trophy tour”.
The select committee which has been negotiating on the electoral reforms has returned a damning verdict on technology preparedness of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
Both Cord and Jubilee had seven members in the joint committee which was co-chaired by Siaya Senator James Orengo and his Meru counterpart Kiraitu Murungi.
The committee found that about 7,000 of the 15,000 biometric voter registration (BVR) kits that IEBC acquired ahead of the 2013 General Election had completely broken down, leaving just about 8,000 or 55 per cent of the total kits.
A member of the committee told Nation that they also established that the 8,000 kits which the commission has been using to register new voters are also unreliable.
Similarly, of the 34,000 Electronic Voter Identification devices (Evids), 12,000 were equally broken down completely.
“Even the 65 per cent that are still functional are totally unreliable,” a member of the Joint Parliamentary Select Committee told Nation.
Meanwhile, the Results Transmission System (RTS) had totally failed, the committee established.
RTS, the committee discovered, was internally developed and relied on a single telecommunication service provider, Safaricom, making the whole system untrustworthy as it was also not tested before the last elections.
“The current BVR, EVID and RTS electoral equipment and systems are obsolete due to non-compliance to the initial technical specifications, tear and ware, aging and poor support and maintenance. The current electoral equipment and systems at IEBC are not functional thus cannot be used for the next General Election. There is need to procure a new integrated election system i.e ICT electoral equipment and systems (BVR, EVID, nomination and RTS Systems),” a summary of the report states.
'TROPHY TOUR'
The Joint Select Committee is expected to have a busy week, a period they are calling a “trophy tour”.
On Monday, they will present their report to the leaders of the Senate and National Assembly from the two coalitions.
On Tuesday, they will meet with the house business committees of the two houses to list the matter for debate during a special sitting on Thursday.
Meanwhile, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Cord leader Raila Odinga will meet with all the members of the joint select committee on Wednesday.
It is not yet clear whether the meeting will be done jointly.
In order to come up with the findings, the Joint Select Committee had formed a sub-committee composed of ICT experts “representing IEBC, CORD, Jubilee and Computer Society of Kenya (CSK).”
“The ICT experts were required to provide expert opinion, advice and recommendations to the PSC (Parliamentary Select Committee Commission) regarding the challenges IEBC experienced due to technology failure during the 2013 General Election, consider the memorandum, proposals and verbatim presentations made to the PSC by various stakeholders and recommend appropriate and affordable ICT solutions for 2017 General Election,” a section of the report states.
IEBC was represented by its ICT director James Muhati Buyekane and Silas Njeru Kivuti, a manager in charge of service delivery within the directorate.
Cord’s ICT expert was Edwin Ngonga while Jubilee was represented by Julius Ogony.
These ICT experts were separate from the legal and political experts the two coalitions also had by their side.
The legal and political experts were Kamotho Waiganjo and Vincent Mutai representing Jubilee, and Bobi Mkangi and Wachira Maina for Cord.
The joint rapporteurs were lawyers James Mamboleo representing Jubilee and Apollo Mboya, the former Law Society of Kenya (LSK) CEO for Cord.
“This is the sad state of affairs we are in but because of the culture of fear no one has been brave enough to come out to admit. We are thankful of Cord for demanding electoral reforms that led to the formation of this committee because we may have never known,” a member of the committee said of the information technology status of the IEBC.
SAFEGUARDING SYSTEM
In the recommendations, sections of which Nation has obtained, the joint committee on advice of the ICT experts are recommending that BVR and Evids be integrated so as to avoid transfer of data that could lead to loss and tampering of the same.
“BVR and Evids are essentially doing the same thing and there is no need to have both separately,” a member of the joint committee said.
Though the joint committee is proposing that IEBC procures the new technologies by December 1, another challenge arose as officials within the commission fear they may later be dragged to court in case of any procurement queries.
In order to resolve the stand-off and deal with IEBC’s fears, the committee is proposing a broad-based procurement team that will be led by the commission and comprise external officials of other government agencies.
The broad-based procurement team will be required to identify suppliers for 44,000 Evids.
The committee is recommending that IEBC should also ensure that each polling station across the country will have a maximum of 500 registered voters.
The procurement of the new Evids and RTS will be divorced from the commissioners for whom the committee has recommended a dignified exit to pave way for new commissioners by November.
“IEBC should seek support from Information Communication Technology Authority (ICTA) and advisory opinion from PPOA (Public Procurement Oversight Authority), EACC (Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission) and KENAO (Kenya National Audit Office) in order to fast track procurement in view of the limited timelines before the 2017 General Election.
Though an expression of interest for RTS is already out, the committee is recommending a similar broad-based team for its acquisition.
“IEBC should form a telecommunication working group which should include Telecommunication Service Providers in Kenya (TESPOK) and Communication Authority (CA) to address any gaps in broadband access and achieve national telecommunication coverage across the country,” the committee says in its recommendations.
Once the new ICT architecture is in place, the same will be gazetted to give them a legal backing.
IEBC will also be required to set up a Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) to help in case of loss of election data.
“Manual election and tallying will only become a fall back if the DRC also fails,” a member of the committee said.
ELECTION RESULTS TRANSMISSION
In terms of elections proper, the joint committee is also recommending that results be transmitted to the level where there is a requisite returning officer.
That is to say, results for National Assembly and County Assembly members will be transmitted to the constituency tallying centre while results for Woman Representative, Governor and Senator will be transmitted to the county tallying centre.
Only the presidential results will be transmitted to the national tallying centre.
In terms of party nominations, the joint committee agreed that each party to supervise its own nominations though individual parties can request IEBC’s help. However, a party that opts to use IEBC to conduct the nominations will agree to have the Evids and RTS deployed to prevent an individual participating in nominations of two political parties.
“That will also test the IEBC technology preparedness,” a member of the committee said.
And to reduce instances of party hopping, the committee has proposed that each party will have its nomination date gazetted and that all party nominations must be done at least 60 days before elections.
At least 14 days ahead of the nomination the committee has recommended that political parties present their party lists with no option to alter names after submission.
As the joint committee prepares to submit its, Parliament will however have to decide on the number of new IEBC commissioners.
Jubilee wanted the number retained at nine “because of the workload since it has often been a tradition that each commissioner oversees the old provinces, and to represent the face of Kenya.
However, Cord was pushing for a minimum of three and a maximum of five.
