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ICTs Supporting Democracy in Rwanda through Capacity Building at the National Electoral Commission![]() The ICTs for Elections and Community Access project is working with Rwanda's National Electoral Commission (NEC) to improve their capacity through the use of ICTs in three main areas.
![]() For example, prior to the dot-ORG project, the NEC had to store its national voter registration database on a small server loaned to them from the Ministry of Local Government. Moreover, the NEC had relied on a consultant from another ministry to build and update its database. And much of voter verification and updating was processed by hand from the provincial offices, using paper ledgers sent to the central office. This often handwritten information was then entered into the database on borrowed computers from other government departments, a process that was rife with inaccuracies, lost documents, and opportunities for misuse. The NEC therefore needed the internal capacity to develop and maintain an enterprise level database, a server to house the database, high-quality printers, and stronger IT capacity to ensure the timely, accurate, and transparent management of the voter registration data. Developing the Infrastructure for Higher Quality Data AED and its resource partner, GeekCorps, are focusing on providing high-value IT infrastructure and applications to the NEC as well as technical assistance and training to the NEC's IT staff who will maintain this infrastructure. In February 2003, dot-ORG and the NEC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that defined the IT equipment and training/TA that the NEC would receive under this project. ![]() dot-ORG also delivered 12 personal computers (with modems and CDRom drives) and Deskjet color printers, which will be installed in the NEC's provincial offices to expedite the database updating process. With these new computers, most of the data processing will be done at the provinces and files transferred electronically to the main server at the head office. Between elections, the computers will be used to maintain data communication between the provinces and the head office. In the upcoming months, dot-ORG intends to support the NEC's IT staff by providing intensive training in database and election management. Building Transparent and Democratic Systems National Electoral Commission Executive Secretary, Mr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, recently noted the value of dot-ORG's assistance in strengthening democracy in Rwanda. As he observed, Organizing a national election is a very daunting task. The task becomes even more challenging when it is being done in a country with very limited resources and which, less than ten years ago, went through a war and a genocide that took the lives of close to a million people and left behind a shattered infrastructure.AED was awarded the Rwanda Project July 3, 2002 for a period of two years (Award No. 623-G-00-02-00056-00 under the dot-ORG Leader Award No.GDG-A-00-01-00014-00.) |
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