Interconnected network elements:

https://twitter.com/kisstvnews/status/309372137368608768

./bernard

On Mar 6, 2013 9:52 PM, "John Doe" <fivepings@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Adam,

That was a breath of fresh air indeed. 
Interesting perspective on diversity and inclusion. 

Adding my 2 cents worth to the tangent you have taken ( a.k.a thread hijack :-) )...I find the clamor for .co.ke domains to be limiting. The Internet makes us equal .co.ke may open doors for me in Kenya or East Africa but close doors in Asia, America etc. I agree we need to be more open. Embracing .com domains is one way to do this.


However to put some context to the issue: Superior homegrown solutions have historically been overlooked in favor of average 'made in  x' solutions simply because of preconceived notions about local quality and competence hence the clamor by the local techie to promote his own.
Sent from my iPad

On Mar 6, 2013, at 4:02 PM, Adam Nelson <adam@varud.com> wrote:

I just wanted to respond to many of the issues raised today about the IEBC, the electronic tallying system, and about open access.  As one of the few non-Kenyans on the list (2 months in Nairobi, previously NY where I did alot of Python work), maybe I have a unique outsiders point of view.

Of course, this is not my election, but I it is important to the world that Kenya has strong institutions and the duty to create and maintain those institutions lies with everybody. 

Hardware is likely not the problem here (disk space comments aside - which are surely do to logical, not physical errors), the problem is multifaceted:

On this list, there is a strong bias towards "Kenyan solutions" or "Kenyanborn".  Aside from finding this kind of offensive, it's also just petty and backwards.  The reason IEBC exists is not to support the local ICT industry, it's to facilitate a trustworthy platform on which Kenyan elections can take place.  In addition, there are hundreds of elections a year around the world and for Kenya to have a one-off system that has never been used elsewhere and will never be used elsewhere is neither efficient nor high quality.  Maybe the local word processor and spreadsheet apps should be "Kenyanborn" too?  

At my last job in the States, almost half the team was non-American and that was a strength, not a weakness.  We don't know what happened at the IEBC yet, and kudos to the people working to get that data available, but the failures here cannot be blamed on 'outsiders'.  Some of the commentary is bordering on xenophobic.

As for openness at the code level, that would certainly be awesome.  Check out this article (http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/11/internet-based-and-open-source-how-e-voting-is-working-around-the-globe/) and connect with the Brazilians and Australians rather than try to create a techno-autarky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky).

Cheers,
Adam




On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Bwana Lawi <mail2lawi@gmail.com> wrote:
Cool, we have made up. Hugs and shoulder pats.

Can we get back to the issue at hand now?

:)


On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Rad! <conradakunga@gmail.com> wrote:
Then I wish you had said that to begin with sans the knee jerk reaction.

I absolutely agree with you about the opening up of the software, and not just that - the processes and procedures followed by all the people in the chain


On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Bernard Owuor wrote:
Skunks,
If I knew that this windows-vs-linux thing was so emotive, I'd have skipped it totally.

It is really obscuring the point I'm trying to make - which is - opening up softwares built in the public interest - not just to strengthen the systems, but also to foster confidence among the varioius stake-holders.

@Steve, you're really in agreement with me. We're all speculating, so treat my "windows 8 server" bashing as just that. Just between you and me, I know that mysql would complain thus in a Linux system if it ran out of disk space - because Linux stores locks on the disk. I didn't know the same happened in windows too. But hey, we're free to speculate in the absence of information.

@Rad,  a bad workman 'quarrels' with his tool. Most of those who 'blame' their tools seldom work, thus they don't qualify to be called workmen of any type.... A good workman selects the right tool for the job.

From: Rad! <conradakunga@gmail.com>
To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 1:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] IEBC Systems

See? The last bastion of "professionals"

And yet ATMs, MPesa etc run on Windows. 

Bad craftsmen blame their tools

On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Alex Nyalita wrote:
Wait... a Windows platform for  a  mission critical system? SMDH!!!

----

Kind Regards,

Alex Nyalita



On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Patrick Kariuki <patrick.kariuki@gmail.com> wrote:
Where the experiential learning cycle comes in, when you've got all the time in the world; 
1. What happened to the system? (we have little or no idea)
2. What was experienced by the end user? (some error message) 
3. Why did this happen? (come up with all kinds of possible assumptions on what happened - based on similar error messages you've had with different production systems)
4. What is to be done to avoid future occurrences?(give free advise, we know they're reading this - wait, isn't someone getting paid to do all these??)

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:00 PM, Bernard Mwagiru <bmwagiru@gmail.com> wrote:
What I've noticed I'm my short experience is decimation of lessons learnt. Between us we have years of technical hands-on, get-your-hands-dirty experience.
What we should discuss in this thread, IMHO, is potential design flaws. Without quoting any press on who said what or where. Whiteafrican has a high level call flow on the various interconnecting elements.
We can use that for starters.
./bernard
On Mar 6, 2013 10:18 AM, "Tech List Kenya" <techlistkenya@gmail.com> wrote:
It's our professional duty and responsibility to question this. In as much as IEBC needs time to sort themselves, and inasmuch as we acknowledge that things go wrong, we cannot just sweep it under the carpet and shrug it off. Sorry to say, that's just plain irresponsible.
 
Most of you know how much clients ride you to deliver, even clients who don't pay. Especially these ones. Now imagine a client paying 9b! I am always amused at how much slack we want to cut guys who undercut us.
 
Anyway, back to issue at hand.
 
@Mwagiru, can you lead a virtual team to conceptualize a proper voting
 
@Hans, the doc you posted shows the RFP as of Dec. With screenshots from both mobile and desktop apps. This means the system had already been developed. So what is the point of failure? If we say the failure is not in transmission but rather in processing, does that mean the data is already at IEBC servers?
What would be the technological reason for the system to stop processing (this is a very ambiguous term). Data visualization is being done by google from IEBC servers.
 
So what exactly is failing?
 
 
 
 


On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Shadrack Mwaniki <shadrack_mwaniki@yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear Skunks,
Pole for the delay in results.
These are the kind of things that make people suspicious and not trust local ICT professionals.
The public has no idea if th system is foreign or local. All they know is that 9b of their money was spent
on the systems.
The transactions being managed by IEBC are so small that they can be managed by a powerful desk top on any
relational database. doin't even talk of concurrent submission of results because all that is need is a good queue
management algorith.
A separate desktop would handle the incoming traffic from polling stations
As have al

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