#BringBackOurData - The case for hosting Kenyan websites at home
What you need to know:
- The communication regulator's site www.ca.go.ke has its content enjoying the current snowstorms that are hitting northern parts of the US.
- 2009 is the year we landed the submarine fibre optic cable that allowed Kenyans to access content on the Internet at internationally acceptable speeds.
- Hosting abroad increases outbound traffic on our international Internet links.
Most organisations that have a website never bother to find out whether their content is hosted locally or abroad.
For them, the key issue is getting 24/7 uptime service for their websites, email and other Internet services.
A simple technical check — a “Traceroute” command performed on the host IP numbers, or using the www.iplocation.net utility — gives interesting results. It shows that key Kenyan government sites prefer to host their content abroad.
The content on the State House website, www.president.go.ke, sits somewhere in the United States. Never mind the non-functional www.statehousekenya.go.ke, which used to reside in Washington, DC.
The communication regulator's site, www.ca.go.ke, has its content enjoying the current snowstorms that are hitting the northern parts of the US. The newly launched content for the citizen portal (www.ecitizen.go.ke) also found comfort in the US and sits in Chicago.
HOSTING IN KENYA
The much older Kenyan Open Data portal (www.opendata.go.ke) has now completed close to five years of hosting Kenyan data in Missouri, USA.
Not everyone from the government side, however, seems to be excited about hosting abroad. The websites of the ministry of ICT (www.information.go.ke), the ICT Authority (www.icta.go.ke) and the Kenya Revenue Authority (www.kra.go.ke) all sit somewhere in Nairobi, enjoying the hospitality of the green city in the sun.
So, does it really matter whether you host locally or abroad?
Prior to the year 2009, it did. The year 2009 is when we landed the submarine fibre-optic cable that allowed Kenyans to access content on the Internet at internationally acceptable speeds.
UNRELIABLE POWER SUPPLY
Prior to the submarine cable, access to the Internet was through satellite links that were about 10 times slower than fibre links.
This meant that your international clients would experience significant delays when visiting your local site. This situation no longer holds, and locally hosted content should be accessible at similar speeds to those hosted abroad.
The other reason for organisations hosting abroad was unreliable power supply. No one would want their customers to visit their website and find the site is down for whatever reason, power being the most notorious.
Today, whereas power blackouts still exist, they are fewer and shorter. Indeed commercial power supply has improved significantly, particularly in the capital city, where most web-hosting and data-centre companies are located.
LARGE TALENT POOL
Lack of technical support was another common reason advanced by ICT directors for deciding to have content hosted abroad. This is obviously no longer true because, according to a study by Prof M. Kashorda, Kenya has one of the largest pools of technical personnel in sub-Saharan Africa.
This includes a large pool of electrical and telecommunication engineers, computer scientists and technologists, software engineers and information systems graduates.
Most of these graduates proceed to sit and pass international exams to become certified software engineers, certified information security experts, certified network engineers and certified database administrators, among others.
Despite all these developments, some ICT directors prefer to host abroad for reasons better known to them. But there are additional reasons worth noting against hosting abroad.
First is the fact that data about Kenyans, collected by Kenyan taxpayers’ money, for Kenyan consumption should reside locally in Kenya.
BANDWIDTH PAYMENTS
This would spur and sustain ICT jobs within our local data-hosting sector, while reducing capital flight that would otherwise go and do the same for foreign companies.
Secondly, hosting abroad increases outbound traffic on our international Internet links. Essentially, this increases our collective international bandwidth payments that ultimately end up as revenue for foreign companies.
Finally, in case of information security breaches, investigations by local authorities would definitely be easier than if the content were sitting several continents away.
For these reasons, let’s keep our local content local, and #BringBackOurData.
