Using Technology to Deliver the Public Services

For Kenya, the year 2012 was marked with a good number of industrial strikes. The most conspicuous strikes were the teachers’, lecturers’, nurses’ and the doctors’, not undermining the go slow by the chiefs and administration police. The rising cost of living had largely contributed to the strikes. About 2,300 members of the doctors’ union had stopped working after the government said it could not meet their demands for a 300 percent pay rise. Most patients in public hospitals were left unattended and sadly some lost their lives. Some hospitals had hired consultants to replace the striking doctors, but these were still not enough. Private hospitals and clinics however, remained opened as usual and attended to their patients.

On the other hand, about 200,000 teachers were demanding a wage increase of between 100% and 300% after the government had offered nearly 4% pay rise. The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) were demanding a 300 percent salary increment for their members, alongside responsibility allowance at 50 percent, 40 percent and 30 percent for principals and their deputies, senior teachers and heads of departments respectively. The strike had such a huge impact that it altered the annual Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations schedule.

Can technology help the overworked and underpaid teachers, nurses and doctors to provide their essential services? Kenya’s public health sector is facing important challenges that it needs to deal with such as increasing patient loads in public hospitals, a widespread shortage of qualified medical professionals, inequitable distribution of medical resources and the rising cost of providing medical care. Technology can be used to tackle some of these challenges. For instance, health presence is a set up that utilizes communication and collaboration platforms and lets patients interact with doctors hundreds of kilometers away within a clinical setting. In this setup, a qualified medical nurse gathers and transmits physiological data to a specialist doctor from which the doctor can make a prescription or decide the next course of action. With doctors and consultants sitting at Kenyatta National Hospital, the set up can help deliver medical to remote hospitals such as Marsabit where their skills might be rare but will have the availability of a nurse and a clinic with basic facilities.

In the education, the challenges are similar; shortages of teachers staff, overcrowded classes, static learning content and marginalization of semi-arid areas. More than bridging the gap of the students to teachers’ ratio, technology can make learning fun for both teachers and students. Various set ups can be deployed to allow students to share the same teacher or lecturer from one location to more than one classroom. When technology is used for distance learning, students can be face to face with other students a world away exposing them to experiences they would have never had before. This would enhance inter-university collaboration and research leading to innovation and fun learning. Colleges and universities can also bring in experts onto campus for classroom presentations, guest lectures, workshops, and other academic pursuits without their physical presence or considering the geographical distance. Considering that the lectures or lessons are delivered using video, this content can easily be stored for future reference or retrieval by other students or lecturers.

Some countries in the world have embraced technology to provide public services. In India, 60 per cent of the population resides in the rural areas. People living in these areas did not have access to the same quality of medical health care as in urban areas. A health presence solution helped bridge the gap. For some patients, everything from routine appointments to follow-up visits after a major surgery were too expense and inconveniencing to bear. Travel time for physicians and patients would take long hours or may not be fruitful at all. A study by KPMG estimated that India has approximately 12 hospital beds and just 6 doctors for every 10,000 patients, while Kenya has a doctor-to-patient ratio of one doctor for every 17,000 patients. The World Health Organisation recommends of one doctor for every 1,000 patients. Would Kenya deploy such technology to cater for the deficit?

Research and education requires relations between different institutes, research organizations, technology partners, and government departments. In the US, the National LambdaRail (NLR) was developed to provide of high-speed nationwide optical networking services for member research organizations, similar to Kenya’s Kenya Education Network (KENET). NLR enabled has enabled access to video conferencing services for anyone with access to the national facility. The facility has assisted in universities in the US to hold telepresence sessions with abroad such as in April, 2009 with the Khalifa University for Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Through KENET, Kenya can take similar strides and lecturers from the main universities can be delivered to constituent colleges and campus. This will reduce the work load on lecturers and improve the lecturer to student ratio, virtually.

Why CCK Switched Off Fake Mobile Phones

On September 30th, 2012, approximately about 1.5 million fake mobile phones in the Kenyan market were switched off by mobile service providers on order by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK). This went into the various initiatives to prevent crime perpetrated by wrong personification using mobile phones, such as money transfer fraud, threat text messages and so on. The exercise was conducted by comparing and handset’s International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number - the unique identifier for each phone comparable to a MAC address for computers – with an international database that has been developed by manufacturers. If a person’s phone IMEI number does not exist in this database, the handset is deemed fake and deregistered by the mobile service provider. The current challenge for CCK is the ‘creative’ Kenyans who are changing the IMEIs of the fake phones that have already been switched off thus reconnecting to mobile service provider. Such individuals now stand a jail term of not less than five years or a fine of not less than Sh1 million or both according to the law.

Having a genuine IMEI on your phone has some benefits. The IMEI is a number, usually unique, to identify mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone. The IMEI number helps a service provider track a mobile phone; identify the location, incoming calls and contacts. IMEI is a structural 15 digit number that indicates the origin, model, and serial number of the device. When a subscriber loses a phone and requests the service provider to block its usage, the provider adds the IMEI to an Equipment Identity Register which blacklists the mobile device and renders it useless. Many providers can share information on stolen or blocked mobile devices by having a Central Equipment Identity Register; which is essentially a database of the IMEI numbers of blacklisted by many service providers. This improves users' security by switching off stolen phones, making them useless for mobile phone thieves and thus less likely to be stolen in the first place. Previously, the stolen phone’s IMEI number could be changed to use the phone again. This challenge has been overcome by blocking all IMEIs that are not genuine. In fact, some subscribers that had their phones block in September had genuine phones but with fake IMEIs. Makes sense? The phones had been stolen.

The next phase of the switch-off, which is said to start in January, will target unregistered SIM cards. The activity may affect revenue from mobile money transfer, voice and data services for service providers. To this end, CCK has signed a memorandum of understanding and set a budget to meet the costs incurred by providers in effecting the switch-off. However, the consumers affected by the exercise will not be compensated, causing uproar by the Consumers Federation of Kenya. Switching off of unregistered SIM cards is definitely paramount in fighting crime. In the past, the police commissioner had expressed his concerns in the ability of criminals to purchase and use multiple unregistered SIM cards thus camouflaging their identity. With registered SIM cards, suspicious activity can easily be traced to the owner of the mobile device. As we approach the elections, it will be important to identity individuals who send hate messages. Without SIM registration, this task is impossible. Does SIM registration intrude into your privacy? Yes it does, but so does bank account details, Kenya Revenue Authority certificate, Insurance Cover details and so on. If well managed, demographic information that is shared during SIM registration can provide reference in make certain beneficial policies.

Other countries in the region also plan to follow the Kenyan example. In Rwanda, for instance, the Rwanda’s telecommunications regulatory body, the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), intends to get rid of the counterfeit handsets in widespread use in the country at approximately 47.5 percent. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), on the other hand, has opted to first educate the public on the need to buy genuine mobile phones before embarking on the switch-off exercise. Uganda has witnessed an upsurge in the number of fake mobile devices in her market. The regulatory body, Uganda Communication Commission, banned the importation of fake phones and has plans to start blocking counterfeit mobile phones from the 30th November. Fake phones that have been switched off in the region can be recycled. According to Bruce Howe, General Manager for Nokia East Africa, for every one million phones recycled, it is possible to recover nearly 35kg of gold and 350kg of silver, which can be re-used in the production of future electronic goods. This is an opportunity for the industrialists! The National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) already engaged service providers to encourage consumers to dispose of these fake handsets in a responsible manner by recycling them.

Use of Social Media in Politics

The United States presidential election of 2012 is the next United States presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The Democratic and Republican Parties have held their conventions and technology was featured immensely. At the end of President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, there were 52,756 tweets per minute with the hashtag #DNC2012. The outcome of the First Lady’s speech at the convention was a peak of 28,003 per minute while the former President Bill Clinton’s speech had a peak 22,087 per minute. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney hit 14,289 tweets per minute at the end of his speech, while the vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan's hit 6,669 tweets per minute.


All in all, globally, politicians have taken on technology during the campaigns, with most leveraging on social media. For instance, Barack Obama is the most followed world leader with 17,115,077 followers, globally in 5th place just behind Britney Spears. Other leaders include the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is in second place with 3,152,608 followers, followed by the White House, Queen Rania of Jordan and 10 Downing Street who all have over two million followers. In Kenya, a number of presidential candidates have taken on social media; Martha Karua, Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Kalonzo Musyoka and Peter Kenneth. The activities on their accounts though seem to be minimal and are too cautious on tackling pertinent issues discussed on the medium. Most Kenyan politicians revert to “old” technologies such as television and radio to propagate their campaign messages.

Technology can also assist politicians to raise funds during campaigns. Some vendors have developed software suites that scale to match campaigns of different sizes, internet-based fundraising and supporter management packages. The campaign secretariat needs technology to control and manage the campaign activities. The essential tools usually include a website, an email-based Constituent Relations Management system and an online fundraising module. Back in 2008, the Obama campaign online fundraising tapped into a vast number of politically interested ordinary people who could not donate hundreds or thousands of dollars but whose smaller donations can added up to a huge sum. It is also during this time that the Obama campaign utilized the use of text messaging in politics. Frequent updates on the campaign trail and important events would be circulated to the electorate using this medium. Who knows? Maybe in future we will have geo tagging applications that would send political messages based on location.

The main advantage of new campaign support technologies is they allow candidates to accomplish their planned missions efficiently and often more cost effectively, with less staff or fewer volunteers. Video casts have been used in political campaigns with the president candidate Raphael Tuju as one of the pioneers in Kenya. The candidate posted video casts in Sheng, Swahili and English on YouTube during the launch of his presidential campaign. This enabled him to reach an audience on the Internet domain that he would otherwise not been able to reach. However, the some video casts have been to the politicians’ disadvantage. For instance, the puppetry comedy show XYZ exemplifies some of the political traits in a satirical manner.

In last couple of years, a new trend of the use of technology has emerged. Internet activism has rapidly gained popularity. The activists use electronic communication technologies such as social media to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience. Social media was heavily involved in the Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests that occurred in the Arab world that beginning 18 December 2010. The popularity of viral videos made it easy for people to throw their weight behind campaigns, leading to widespread demos. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen due to the uprisings. News was spread by freelance journalists via blogs, twitter and facebook as the mainstream media cautiously avoided the risk of venturing in the areas with the demonstrations.

Another wave of Internet activism was in 2010 and 2011, when Wikileaks released huge caches of documents and videos that were highly sensitive. This demonstrated how Internet activism can have a global impact and should not be ignored. During the campaign periods, politicians require expert advice as the dive into the use of technology to capture the youth vote. A simple mistake, like posting the wrong photo, could easily change the political dynamics with the opponents taking advantage of the mishap. At the same time, technology can propel a candidate to political glory in the shortest time. Case in point, would Obama be President if there was no Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or the Internet? No.

Behind The Scenes At The Olympics

The Kenya Olympic squad arrived home with 2 Gold, 4 Silver and 5 Bronze medals, landing on position 28 behind South Africa and Ethiopia as far as African countries are concerned. This was a disappointing performance considering the high expectations that Kenyans had on the team. It was unlike the performance in Beijing, China, where Kenya had a sum of 6 Gold, 4 Silver and 4 Bronze medals, a record performance for the Olympic team. Interestingly, the Kenyan squad lost the Gold medal to Mo Farah of the UK (10,000m), Tawfiq Makhloufi of Algeria (1,500m) and Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda (Marathon) who trained in Iten in the Rift Valley region.

The London 2012 Olympics was one of the most spectacular global events in the year 2012 with a lot going on behind the scenes. The event turned out to be test bed for some of the most ICT endeavours by various vendors. Construction in preparation for the event involved considerable redevelopment, with the main focus on the Olympic Park which stood on 490 acre piece of land. Preparation for the event is said to have cost about £9.3 billion, the bulk of it, £5.3 billion, going to building venues and infrastructure. The organizers estimated that 8 million spectators would attend the Olympic Games, while 1.5 million would attend the Paralympic Games. This provided a platform for technology companies to show case their latest inventions.

Starting from the swimming pools, sensitive contact pads were installed to register a swimmer’s best time. At the end of the race, each swimmer had to press the contact pad with a minimal pressure of 6.6 pounds to record their time. The technology used was so precise that the pads could register a time difference of one one-hundredth (0.01) of a second. On the track events, the best times of the athletes were determined differently. At the start of the race, the starter pistol was synchronized with the timing console, to record the best times and detect false starts. At the finish line, athletes would pass a laser that beamed across the track and connected to the timing console.  Additional, cameras capturing 2000 frames per second recorded the winner of the race.

During the London 2012 Olympics, all tickets were sold online. Most of the transactions were cashless. Spectators had to purchase their tickets on the web in advance, to avert long queues at the entrance. Visa was the Olympics official payment provider; spectators would use Visa to purchase snacks, drinks and so on, without cash. In fact, ATMs were switched off by officials complying with the Visa's sponsorship terms. Another conspicuous sponsor was O2, the second-largest mobile telecommunications provider in the United Kingdom and is headquartered in Slough. The mobile operator signed a deal with Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to make free wifi available to millions of residents and visitors.

British Telecom was not left behind in exhibiting her expertise during the Olympics. The telecommunications services company is one of the largest in the world and with presence in over 170 countries. BT delivered a cloud based voice network connecting 25 Olympic venues as the Games' official communications services partner. A converged voice, video and data network was provided for the London 2012 Olympics interlinking all the venues. More than 16,500 handsets were deployed across all London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) offices and London 2012 Olympic sites ahead of the opening ceremony. The cloud service was based on Cisco’s Hosted Unified Communications Services (HUCS) platform and had been under testing since the end of May 2011.

3D broadcasting technology had already been tested on sports such as basketball and big stadium events and the Wimbledon tennis finals. The London 2012 Olympics followed suit in earnest. Panasonic had announced that the London 2012 Games will be the first Olympics to be broadcast live in 3D. Panasonic provided 3D equipment including camcorders, TV monitors and a technical team for live 3D TV production at the Olympics. Various broadcasters would then pick the signal and broadcast their customers. Coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics was made in HD, but the London 2012 Olympics took it a notch higher by using the state-of-art technology to broadcast the sports.

Looking at Local Content

On July 8 2012, the Kenya Open Data Initiative celebrated its one year anniversary. The initiative, launched by the President on the same day last year, was aimed at making key government data freely available to the public through a single online portal. The data available would include such information as census, national and regional expenditure, and information on key public services. So far, the portal has been used in research and education, creation of Mashups - a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services - and journalism. Some of the Mashups include Kenya Budget Explorer, an initiative of Twaweza to visualize the Kenyan budget, and Mzalendo, a portal that keeps an eye on the Kenyan parliament highlighting the latest news as relating to parliament; Hansard recordings; information on MPs and their participation in parliament.

The anniversary of Kenya Open Data Initiative was celebrated at the Open Data Development for Development Camp held at the iLabAfrica – Strathmore University on the 27th and the 28th of June 2012. The event was organized by ICT Board Kenya, Kenya Open Data Initiative, Open for Change, World Bank, NaiLab, @iLabAfrica, Akvo, 1%CLUB, Hivos, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and Development Gateway, among other collaborators. The event assembled Government officials, educational researchers, software developers, journalists and other players in the ICT experts. The aim was to share experiences and networks, build tools, and show the power of Open Data. In essence, the event highlighted the importance of Government as a source of local content and how players in the ICT space would enable the citizens to access data provided by Government.

Local content can be created either for local or global consumption, meaning contextual origin in the region it is utilized or served from. Another aspect of local content is content hosted in data centers that are local to the country, for instance the google cache servers in Kenya or the web content on the .co.ke domain names. At the moment, unfortunately, over 90% of Internet users in Kenya are net receivers of information from foreign sources in the US and Europe. How can we change this? The Kenya Open Data Initiative is certainly an effort towards the right direction. Citizens would be enticed to access local content if more Government services were available online such Identity Card and Passport application, Birth or Death Certificate application, Title Deed search and application, Business Licenses application and verification, Driving License renewal and so on. The mobile payment systems can be integrated for any form of payment required for the services.

Another way of creating local content is by capturing the local cultural activities and traditions or even better producing content in the local language. For instance; the locally contrived ‘Kulahappy’ comedy animations that have been done in Swahili. The XYZ show has also attracted online viewers, especially the Kenyans in Diaspora who want to catch with the local political intrigues. E-Commerce is an emerging concept of local content. Portals such as Mama Mike’s has provided a unique solution to facilitate incoming remittances by enabling Kenyans living abroad to send goods and services to their family and friends back home. Through the portal, Kenyans abroad can buy supermarket vouchers, buy airtime, pay electricity bills or school fees, send gifts or flowers and so on.

Funding can be a challenge in producing local content. In an effort to promote local content, Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa has been running a $4 million three-year grant program to support the development of local digital content. Applicants can apply for up to $50,000 for companies, $10,000 for individuals and $150,000 matching grant for established companies. The short listed applicants are taken through a business strategy training that assists in understanding how to write a business plan, price products and develop a marketing strategy. The program began in 2010 with the first round of funding to 15 grantees worth $689,526 while the second round had 30 grantees selected for funding worth a total of $1.28 million. The second round has 2,000 applicants, indicating the quest of many Kenyans in venturing into creation of local content.

New Room for Startups

When you talk of startups in the Kenyan ICT industry, Carft Silicon will most likely come to mind. Craft Silicon has grown over the last decade to become a force to reckon with regionally in the development and implementation of financial institutions around Africa. Key among its clientele are the Equatorial Commercial Bank, Jamii Bora Bank, Nakumatt Holdings Limited and Safaricom Limited in Kenya as well as Fullerton India Credit Company Limited, Dar es Salaam Community Bank and First Bank Nigeria (FBN) Microfinance Limited in other regions around Africa as well as beyond. The Kenyan market is rapidly changing. Contrary to the perpetual dominance by the ‘big players’ in the ICT space, there is, certainly, new room for startups. Moreover, there is a growing interest in local solutions to local problems using technology.

The second edition of Pivot 25 held on June 5th and 6th in Nairobi is a case in point. The regional competition allowed technology enthusiasts to show cases of their talent. The event provided an avenue for upcoming mobile entrepreneurs to market their products and receive support from interested capitalists or finance initiatives. Participants in the competition were drawn from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan. The event was organised by m:lab East Africa and its consortium partners led by the World Wide Web Foundation, iHub, University of Nairobi and eMobilis. The sponsors of the event included; Nokia, Equity Bank, Samsung, Google, Tigo and Elma.

There were five categories in the competition; Mobile Payments/Commerce, Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities, Business and Enterprise, Government, Agriculture and Education and Health. Out of the 100 participating teams, the best 25 mobile applications were selected to pitch for their products at the Pivot 25 conference in Nairobi which was conjoined with an array of interviews with various executive in the ICT industry. Prizes of $5,000 were awarded to the winners of each of the 5 categories. Now, isn’t that good startup capital? The overall winner will go to pitch for their product at the DEMO conference in California.

This year’s winner were mShop by MTL Systems from Kenya in the Mobile Payments/Commerce category, Whive by Space Kenya in the Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities category, Uhasibu by PlusPeople in the Business and Enterprise category, SchoolSMS by Tusqee Systems in the Government, Agriculture and Education category and MedKenya by Shimba Technologies who were the overall winners in the Health category.Another upcoming event presents an opportunity for startups. In October 24-26 this year, the first DEMO conference in Africa will be held at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in Nairobi. DEMO has partnered with the U.S. Department of State, Microsoft, Nokia, African Development Bank, USAID, and Global Entrepreneurship to form the Liberalizing Innovation Opportunity Nations (LIONS@FRICA). LIONS@FRICA will be facilitating the first DEMO event in Africa.

DEMO has been in existence for 21 years, providing a platform for innovators to launch their products. Previous DEMO events have helped introduce new products and services that have become well-known brands such as Adobe Acrobat, WebEx, Salesforce.com and Tivo. Scouts from established companies like Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Symantec, HP, SAP and Yahoo would attend the event to invest in viable ideas. Essentially, the event is a global stage for startup to pitch to venture capitalists. Other International DEMO conferences including: two DEMO conferences in the United States, DEMO Asia, DEMO China and DEMO Brazil.

On the African continent front, another startup event will be held in Senegal. The Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Startup Boot Camp will held on July 10th and 11th 2012 in the capital of Senegal, Dakar. The event has been organized by LIONS@FRICA, by CTIC Dakar which is a Senegalese incubator and the African Development Bank. During the boot camp, the startup entrepreneurs are intensive trained on creative and innovative thinking and harnessing talent in the fields of ICT, energy, healthcare and agriculture. The boot camp is available to a representative from 100 of the most-qualified ventures. There is a second day of mentorship and venture pitching on Wednesday, July 11 that will be available to the forty most-qualified ventures. A similar event was held in Marakesh, Morocco, on January 15-16 to nurture creative ideas and innovation.

Justice Not Delayed

In 2010, the cabinet approved the Judicial Service Bill 2010 that would revolutionize the Kenya Judicial System. This was the beginning of judicial reforms. The bill would make provision for judicial services and administration of the Judiciary, provide structures in the appointment of members of the Judicial Service Commission, make provision for the establishment of a Judiciary Fund, provide for the procedure of appointment, discipline and removal of judges, other judicial officers and staff and establish the National Council on Administration of Justice. By the beginning of 2012, Kenya had a Judicial Service Commission, a new Chief Justice and the vetting of judges had commenced. But is everything ok?

An aspect of judicial reforms that had not been captured was the mitigation of the delays experienced in the judicial system. The Kenyan Judicial System has in the past been plagued with the backlog of cases denying justice to the populace. One of the ways of dealing with this problem is automation of the entire judicial system to help citizens get justice in the shortest time possible. A good comparison is the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has embraced technology in their courts - with a click of a mouse button; the judges were able to see the number of pending cases and also the lifespan of the cases. Such techniques greatly reduce the time required to for the bench to deliver a judgment.

There are various initiatives by the Kenya Judiciary towards adopting technology. Recently, the National Youth Service posted 62 copy typists to the Judiciary to clear the backlog of records that have held up judgments and appeals because they were not typed and other important data entries. After the digitization of the court records, the next challenge will be in the training of the staff and the bench on utilization this content. In fact, according to Chief Justice, Dr. Willy Mutunga, the Judiciary will re-train magistrates on new technology to enable quick completion of cases. Magistrates who will be hired will not have clerks; they will only be supplied with laptops to record the proceedings of the cases.

Back in 2010, another initiative in Kenya’s judiciary was in the launching of the first ever telepresence solution for the hearing of cases in a partnership between Cisco, Safaricom, and the judiciary. The first case was relayed from Mombasa city where the Court of Appeal heard three cases via telepresence where the bench sat in Nairobi while the respective lawyers were in Mombasa. Telepresence, which integrates life-size High Definition (HD) video with high-quality sound in a room setup, creates the feel of actually being in the same room as participants at other locations. The solution would greatly reduce the need to travel over long distances; probably it would improve security if it introduced between the High Courts and maximum prisons. Often, prisoners have to be transported to the Nairobi Central Business District just to hear their cases. Wouldn’t it be more secure to have their lawyers argue their cases in court as they follow the proceedings from the prison?

With the assistance of the ICT Board and the Judiciary, the Judiciary has already finalized phase one of the physical organization and quantification of court documents to be digitized. The activity involved preparation of the files through cleansing of files for the last 10 years. A total of 325,000 files in the Court of Appeal and High Court Divisions of all High Court Stations in the country i.e. Milimani, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Nyeri, Meru, Embu, Machakos, Malindi, Kericho, Kisii, Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and Kitale Law Courts were cleansed. With the upcoming elections, the Kenya Judiciary System is expected to be strained by loads of law suits from the election results. It is thus prudent for the Judiciary to be prepared, considering the devolved system of Government according to the new constitution. The first step towards offering justice at the county level is the digitization of the judicial process.

Similar initiatives in other parts of the world have proved to be beneficial. For instance, the Integrated Electronic Litigation Systems (iELS) was an initiative by the Singapore Judiciary to replace the existing Electronic Filing System (EFS). EFS was conceived and developed in the mid- to late-1990s, and iELS represented the second phase in implementing technology to enhance the litigation process in Singapore. Upon its rollout in 2011, iELS was the world's first properly "paperless" electronic court platform. The iELS was designed to deliver a modern platform for the integration of ICT systems of the Judiciary, the legal profession and litigants. It integrates workflow and electronic forms seamlessly using the content management system as the presentation layer for electronic filing. In this way, the courts are able to pro-actively track and manage pending matters

Digital TV Finally Here

In 2006, a global project to migrate from analogue TV to digital TV was initiated during a telecommunications conference in Geneva. A deadline of June 2015 was set by which all broadcasters are expected to have migrated to the digital platform. Kenya has since followed suit in the global trends and has become the third country to commence her migration to digital TV in Africa. On 9th December, 2009, the President launched digital TV in Kenya during an inauguration ceremony at the Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation (KBC) transmitting station. Since then, the technology has not been wholly availed to the public domain, but has been undergoing tests and modifications. The technology is being operated by Signet, a subsidiary of the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), specifically set up to broadcast and distribute the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) signals.

The digital TV coverage is expected to gradually spread to the rest of the country to pave way to the complete migration by the year 2012. The complete switch to digital broadcasting is expected to cost Sh6 billion (USD 80 million) and an initial Sh152 million (USD 2 million) has already been allocated. Broadcasters will be required to sign transmission contracts with Signet upon licensing by the CCK. Signet will carry private broadcasters signals free of charge, but will charge for its services after 2012. This means that broadcasters will concentrate on content development as opposed to incurring costs on none core business issues such as building and maintaining infrastructure.

The Media Owners Association (MOA) has, however, expressed its reservations towards Signet running the entire digital TV network. In fact, it is said that all of Kenya's free-to-air television broadcasters will form a joint company to obtain a license to broadcast digital signals across the country. The move is expected to end the stand-off between the Information Ministry and broadcasters such as Nation Media Group (NTV) and Royal Media Services (Citizen TV), who had protested when the second digital broadcasting license was given to China's Pan African Network Group. There are more than twenty television firms currently broadcasting in various parts of Kenya.

The migration from analog to digital TV signal has not only been slowed down by the tests and modifications, but also by the impromptu ban of Digital Video Broadcasting- Terrestrial (DVB-T1) set-top boxes and shifting focus to Digital Video Broadcasting- Terrestrial 2 (DVB-T2) in February, 2011 by the government. DVB-T2 has better picture and sound quality, more channels on the same frequency, larger coverage per transmitting station, flexibility in handling both high definition and standard definition channels and better security features to prevent unauthorized access. Access at digital TV will require Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial (DVBT) enabled TV set or an MPEG-4 digital converter.

Around Nairobi, the signal can be received in Ngong, Kajiado, parts of Machakos, Kiambu, Thika, parts of Muranga, and some parts of Embu. The Government announced that by July 2012, the DVB T2 digital TV signal would be available in 70% of the country. Briefing the stakeholders on the status of the migration process, Information and Communications Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo said the Government was committed to ensuring that all Kenyans have access to digital TV services. The Permanent Secretary called on the private sector to import DVB T2 compliant set top boxes for sale in the country to facilitate access to digital TV services by the public. As of late 2009, 10 countries had completed the process of turning off analog terrestrial broadcasting. Many other countries had plans to do so or were in the process of a staged conversion. The first country to make a wholesale switch to digital over-the-air (terrestrial) broadcasting was Luxembourg, in 2006, followed by the Netherlands later in 2006, Finland, Andorra, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in 2007, Belgium (Flanders) and Germany in 2008, and the United States, Denmark and South Africa in 2009.

The East African Internet Outage

In February, a ship dragging its anchor 5 Km off the coast of the Kenyan port city of Mombasa damaged The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable severely degrading the Internet and International telephony services in East Africa region. Among the countries that were affected include Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan. In a separate incidence, a cargo ship dragged its anchor over a distance of 150km in the Red Sea between Djibouti and Port Sudan, damaging three undersea cables; the EASSy; the South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 (SMW3); and the Europe-India Gateway (EIG) several days before.

Though the impact on the EaSSy cable was minimal, since traffic on EASSy exits Africa through Djibouti, the cut presents a similar challenge to the one on TEAMS – restoration timeline. Both EASSy and TEAMS had indicated a restoration timeline of up to three weeks. The outage significantly affected business operations for most companies and organizations in East Africa, mostly due to their dependence on accessibility of fast and reliable Internet. Among the multinational companies operating in the region include Google, Microsoft, IBM and Samsung. Local companies that run e-commerce applications and other platforms that depend on the Internet were hugely affected.

The two submarines cables, TEAMS and EaSSy, were completed in July 2010 and September 2009 respectively to link the East African region to the rest of the world. The TEAMS cable was originally designed to have a capacity of 1.28 terabit per second (Tbit/s) while EASSy is the highest capacity system serving sub-Saharan Africa, with a 4.72 terabit per second (Tbit/s) design capacity. SEACOM on the hand has a design capacity of 1.28 terabit per second (Tbit/s), theoretically not enough to support both TEAMS design capacity. Important to note is that the design capacities are utilized as the demand for Internet capacity from the shareholders grows. With the three submarine cables at the coast of East Africa, there were still intermittent interruptions of Internet service and in some instances total outage. Which begs the question, can we provide better redundancy to the submarines cables in the region?

Comparing the submarines cable in East Africa to those in other parts of Africa, the West African region has far much more capacity and a variety of submarine cables than the East. The West Africa Cable System (WACS) and the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) both a design capacities of 5.12 terabit per second (Tbit/s) while Globacom-1 (GLO-1) has a design capacity of 2.5 terabit per second (Tbit/s). Would these capacities provide a better redundant solution to the submarine cable in the East? What about running a terrestrial intra-Africa cable interconnecting the East to the West? Would this alleviate the challenges faced in the month of February? It would. Submarine cables landing in sub-Saharan Africa currently reach 37.4 million people within a 25-km range of landing stations, equivalent to 4.4% of the total population. Africa’s terrestrial fibre optic networks reach some 259.3 million people within a 25-km range of operational fibre nodes, 30.8% of the population.

Apart from providing redundancy and additional capacity to the submarine cables, an East to West intra-Africa terrestrial cable would provide high capacity links for traffic between the East and West African countries and enhance trade relations and commerce opportunities, already were showing by the entrance of West Africa banks and Telecos into the East African market. Currently, most terrestrial cables in Africa are within countries to distribute capacity inland and are rarely used to interconnect countries. The central African region barely has terrestrial cables and would serve as a bargaining point for running an East to West intra-African terrestrial cable. The cost of such a project would be the major inhibitant, not forgetting political conflict in some of the countries.

An example of an effective terrestrial cable is the TEA Transit Europe-Asia (TEA) terrestrial cable network between Europe and Asia via the territory of Russia. Recognizing the need that many corporations have to diversify their international networks from the traditional trans-pacific submarine cables connecting their Asian and USA/European offices, the TEA terrestrial cable systems were built between China and Europe in 2004. The Asian segment of the TEA terrestrial cable network runs over; the territory of China via cross border interconnections between Rostelecom and its Chinese partners (China Telecom and China Unicom); the territory of Japan via the Russia-Japan Submarine Cable Network (RJCN) constructed by Rostelecom and KDDI and terrestrial cable between Russia and Kazakhstan reaching Central Asia countries.

The Challenge Electronic Voting Poses

Now that elections are around the elections are around the corner, its time to rejuvenate the electronic voting debate. In fact, Kenyans in diaspora now want the government to confirm the use of electrical voting in the next general election. To avoid the recurrence of the chaos in 2007, it would be prudent to adopt technology in the next electoral process. According to the Election officials it could take six years before Kenya adopts an electronic voting system, which is attributed to the high cost of deploying the system. In an effort to initiate a gradual migration to electronic voting, IIEC has already commenced electronic voter registration in 18 constituencies. A total of about 1.5 million voters were registered and their demographic details captured – including biometric features; a facial image and fingerprint.

By definition, electronic voting encompasses different types of voting that embrace both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of vote counting. Electronic voting technology punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks. Care should be taken since electronic voting can be vulnerable and could facilitate electoral fraud. The technology has been around for a while, since punched card systems debuted in the 1960s. Currently, Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France.

Electronic voting technology has its benefits. For instance, it can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. It can also provide a convenient mode of voting for Kenyan in the Diasporas. However, there are some shortcomings of this technology, casing point - the United States Presidential Election of 2000 that spurred the debate about electronic voting. In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Unfortunately, the electronic voting systems that many states purchased to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the presidential election of 2004.

Deployment of electronic voting systems is also complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots may not necessarily be less costly than printed ballots. The cost never goes down. Actually, the cost only goes up as the machines age and need more parts and upgrading. If Kenya were to use touch-screen voting machines, similar to a touch ATM, it would cost of between Kshs. 1.35 Million and Kshs. 2.7 Million per precinct - precinct consists of between 5 and 10 machines respectively. Other costs would include operation and maintenance of the machines, power, storage of the machines as well as programming, testing, auditing and transporting them to precincts on election days.

There are plenty of implementation and policy problems with moving to electronic voting systems, but the technology the benefits far out way these problems. Having suffered post-electoral chaos, Kenya would consider such an option that would provide an election process much more transparent for officials and voters. The benefits for citizens are immediate and obvious, in particular the improved services for voters and less time required to vote, hence shorter queues. Another advantage is that the new systems' step-by-step process will prevent situations in which a citizen mistakenly votes more than once. There is faster tabulation of results, improved accessibility, greater accuracy, and lower risk of human and mechanical errors. Recall the infamous form 16A during the 2007 General election.

Many countries have attempted to take advantage of electronic voting. Electronic voting in Estonia began in October 2005 local elections when Estonia became the first country to have legally binding general elections using the Internet as a means of casting the vote and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials. In 2005 Estonia became the first country to offer Internet voting nationally in local elections. 9,317 people voted online. In 2007, the Australian Defence Force and Defence civilian personnel deployed on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands had the opportunity to vote via the Defence Restricted Network with an Australian Electoral Commission and Defence Department joint pilot project. Electronically submitted votes were printed following polling day, and dispatched to the relevant Divisions for counting. Kenya might strive to make a mark in being the pioneer of electronic voting in Africa.

Is There a Gap Between Industry and Academia?

During the CIO 100 on 29th to 30th November, 2011 at Safari Park, there was a heated debate on whether there is a gap between industry and academia in Kenya. The answer to this question is a definite ‘Yes’, not a ‘maybe’ but a ‘Yes’. The fact is demonstrated by there shear requirement of experience during most of the companies’ recruitment process. If the industry was confident with the product of the academia, the years of experience would not be required for entry jobs. Another illustration of this gap is based on the fact that we rarely find products in the market as a result of ideas conceived in the academia. Mostly, we source for products and services from abroad. One of the illustrations is the construction of Nairobi-Thika super highway; we have locally sourced for raw materials and manual labour, while hiring engineering, design and construction services from India and China. Don’t we have skilled engineers to handle such a task?

Now that we have identified this gap, how do we bridge it? First, the academia needs to be aware of what exists in the industry. For instance, professors can visit the various manufacturing plants and telcos to catch a glimpse of the technology in use. The academia needs to understand what the industry considers as deliverables. A manufacturing plant, for example, would like an engineer who can configure or troubleshoot a Programmable Logic Circuit (PLC) for a conveyor belt using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the shortest time possible. No manufacturer would be interested in a graduate who studied the intricate details of a transistor, but rather the application of it in modern technology. Once this awareness has been created, the academia can then develop a focused curriculum that instills skills required in the industry.

Secondly, the industry needs to reach out to the academia. Safaricom Ltd in collaboration with Strathmore University has set a good example introducing a Master of Science (MSc.TID) programme is designed to support innovation and entrepreneurship in the Telecommunication sector as in important pillar of sustainable economic development. Using such an approach, we can tackle the problem of lacking job readiness in the telecommunications sector is partnerships between the industry and academia. The Cisco Networking Academy (NetAcad) is also aimed at responding to these challenges. The curriculum incorporates hands-on experience when teaching students about computer networks. The NetAcad Program offers various curricula, viz, CCNA, CCNP, Network Security, Fundamentals of Wireless LAN, which cover the principles and practice of designing, building, and maintaining networks capable of supporting national and global organizations.

Another applicable aspect of encouraging the collaboration between academia and industry is exhibitions and competitions. These activities would enable those students to solve real-world engineering problems. . Competition veterans become employees who can be productive on the job from day one. One such activity is the IEEE Centurion Engineering Students Exhibition. The exhibition proves there is a need and opportunity for Kenya to organise an Innovation System in which academia, private sector and public sector collaborate. The Government, through National Council for Science and Technology (NCST), can play a facilitating role to create an innovation system that takes full advantage of Kenya’s comparative advantages.

In Indian, major IT firms have launched partnering initiatives with various institutions of higher learning. For instance, Infosys has launched a program called 'Campus Connect' to align the education being given at various engineering colleges, with the requirements of the industry. On the other hand, Tech Mahindra, a joint venture of Mahindra group and British Telecom, have set up an engineering college, Mahindra College of Engineering, that will equip engineers with the skills required in the industry. Wipro, an innovative IT company in the IT services, BPO and Research and Development, has also started a program called the Wipro Academy of Software Excellence, in association with The Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) to prepare fresh graduates for careers in software programming and provide them with the necessary skills. If Kenya follows these examples, the gap between the academia and the industry will be extinct.