Chris Msando, IEBC technology director. PHOTO | FILE | NMG
Summary
- IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati said the whereabouts of Chris Msando, the acting ICT director at the agency, have not been established and police have mounted a search for him.
- This comes hours after the IEBC announced it will publicly test the results transmission technology in 47 counties in line with the law.
- The breakdown of some of the gadgets in the 2013 poll was at the heart of Raila Odinga’s petition challenging the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as President.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries
Commission’s director for ICT has gone missing hours before the public
testing of a results transmission system today to avoid a repeat of the
2013 polls technology failure.
IEBC chairman Wafula
Chebukati yesterday said the whereabouts of Chris Msando, the acting ICT
director at the agency, have not been established and police have
mounted a search for him.
“The commission wishes to
notify the public that one of its ICT managers was last seen on Friday
night. The last communication from him is an SMS text sent to one of his
colleagues at around 3am on Saturday morning,” said Mr Chebukati.
“We shall issue a more comprehensive statement in due course after we establish more facts about the matter.”
This
comes hours after the IEBC announced it will publicly test the results
transmission technology in 47 counties in line with the law.
The
breakdown of some of the gadgets in the 2013 poll was at the heart of
Raila Odinga’s petition challenging the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as
President.
The Supreme Court upheld Mr Kenyatta’s victory.
Mr Msando assumed the position end of June following the suspension of James Muhati, who was the ICT chief.
Mr
Muhati was sent on compulsory leave on May 27 following accusations
that he had refused to cooperate in an ongoing audit of the 19.74
million-people voter register. Consultancy firm KPMG carried out the
audit.
More challenges
The disappearance of the ICT chief will add to the challenges the IEBC has faced in its quest to deliver credible polls.
The
opposition lodged a series of legal challenges over the organisation of
the election where President Kenyatta is seeking a second and final
five-year term against opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Testing
of IEBC’s election results transmission software is meant to ensure
smooth relay of results from all the 40,883 polling stations.
“IEBC
invites the general public to an end-to-end testing of the results
transmission technology to be used in the General Election,” the agency
said in a notice.
The result transmission system comprises of specially configured mobile phones that transmit the results after tallying.
French
firm Morpho, which supplied 15,000 biometric voter registration kits
for the 2013 polls, was single-sourced to supply the platform dubbed
‘Kenya Integrated Elections Management System’.
It incorporates voter listing, electronic voter identification, and electronic relay of results.
In
2013, more than half of the electronic voter identification kits
(Evids), or poll books, failed, forcing the IEBC to use the manual
system while real-time electronic transmission of results from the field
using mobile phones crashed.
The Evids had a problem with the batteries. About Sh1.2 billion was spent on them.
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