ACCURACY MUST TRUMP SPEED
BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 056
By Ike Señeres 02/19/2011
ACCURACY MUST TRUMP SPEED
Reader Mr. Jose Z. Osias says that there should be no debate between the choices of speed versus accuracy when it comes to the issue of what is important in the automation of the election process. He explained that truth could be twisted by speed if only the partial and unverified results are transmitted early to create trending. He concluded that the goal of achieving accuracy should start with the Voters List.
In the many years that I have planned and managed computerized systems, I have always followed the three pronged framework of Manpower, Infrastructure and Content, or MIC for short. Like my favorite dish of the Ilocano region where Mr. Osias comes from, the anchovies, tomatoes and okra must always be present and should converge to complete the menu, with no element missing. Without MIC coming together, there could be no complete computerization.
At this point, I remember what veteran Management Information Systems (MIS) expert Mr. Rene Relucio always tells me, that in the end, it is the MIS systems administrator who is king, because he holds the keys to the system. While it is true that in the end, content is the real king, Mr. Relucio is absolutely correct, the systems administrator holds the keys to the content, including what could be read from it, and what is written into it.
As a political scientist, I would always say that there should be a balance of power or equilibrium between Manpower, Infrastructure and Content, but in the real world out there, it is the Manpower who holds the real power, being the only living and thinking element of the trio, the other two being innocent and harmless non- living inanimate elements.
Each time I explain the concept of computer security to other people, I always give them the analogy of Fort Knox, supposedly the most secure Infrastructure in the whole world. Of course Fort Knox is secure by design, but just like any ordinary house, it has keys that could open the locks from the outside. It is therefore not the security of the locks that is the question, but the integrity or the reliability of the Manpower who holds the keys that could be questionable.
Many years ago, some ballot boxes were stolen from inside the Congress, where these were kept in custody, supposedly under tight security. Just like Fort Knox, we could say that the Congress is relatively secure, but as it turned out, somebody either gave the keys to someone from the outside. What could be worse than that, is that somebody might have opened it from the inside, disregarding the need for keys. In other words, it could have been an inside job.
Going back to what Mr. Relucio said, it is the systems administrator who is the king, because he holds the power to grant the rights to read from the system, or to write into it, either acting on his own, or under the authority of his superiors. He also has the power to command what data could be stored, or what data could be forwarded or transmitted. “Read and Write” and “Store and Forward” are two computer jargons that watchdogs of computerized systems should memorize.
Also going back to what Mr. Osias said, it is the systems administrator who has the power to decide which data to store and which data to forward and when to store and when to forward the data, indicating that data could actually be withheld due to human intervention, or conversely, it could be forwarded ahead of time, to show a trend that could influence the outcome of the voting, assuming that it is still ongoing at that time.
On the subject of Content being the king, we should all remember that the Voters List is the core of the COMELEC data, the “soul” so to speak. In a manner of speaking, it is the Infrastructure that is the “body” of the system. Even in layman terms, it would not be right for a “body” not to have a “soul”. In the past elections, so much importance has been given to the process of forwarding or transmitting the data, but how could we bring out the true will of the people if many qualified voters are not even in the Voters List?
In technical terms, the characters and images that are seen in the COMELEC Voter ID cards are just simply the printouts of the data that are stored in the Voters List. In other words, the ID cards are just derivatives of the Voters List, the latter being a database. Following the dictum of “Garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO), the Voters List could only produce ID cards for the citizens who are in the list. “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) is another dictum that we should bear in mind.
Tune in to Universal Access 2 to 3pm Monday to Sunday in DZRJ 810 KHZ and KA IKING LIVE! 6 to 7pm Thursdays in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 8 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text to +639997333011. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com. Coffee Clutch Fridays 3 to 6 PM at the Elks Club
By Ike Señeres 02/19/2011
ACCURACY MUST TRUMP SPEED
Reader Mr. Jose Z. Osias says that there should be no debate between the choices of speed versus accuracy when it comes to the issue of what is important in the automation of the election process. He explained that truth could be twisted by speed if only the partial and unverified results are transmitted early to create trending. He concluded that the goal of achieving accuracy should start with the Voters List.
In the many years that I have planned and managed computerized systems, I have always followed the three pronged framework of Manpower, Infrastructure and Content, or MIC for short. Like my favorite dish of the Ilocano region where Mr. Osias comes from, the anchovies, tomatoes and okra must always be present and should converge to complete the menu, with no element missing. Without MIC coming together, there could be no complete computerization.
At this point, I remember what veteran Management Information Systems (MIS) expert Mr. Rene Relucio always tells me, that in the end, it is the MIS systems administrator who is king, because he holds the keys to the system. While it is true that in the end, content is the real king, Mr. Relucio is absolutely correct, the systems administrator holds the keys to the content, including what could be read from it, and what is written into it.
As a political scientist, I would always say that there should be a balance of power or equilibrium between Manpower, Infrastructure and Content, but in the real world out there, it is the Manpower who holds the real power, being the only living and thinking element of the trio, the other two being innocent and harmless non- living inanimate elements.
Each time I explain the concept of computer security to other people, I always give them the analogy of Fort Knox, supposedly the most secure Infrastructure in the whole world. Of course Fort Knox is secure by design, but just like any ordinary house, it has keys that could open the locks from the outside. It is therefore not the security of the locks that is the question, but the integrity or the reliability of the Manpower who holds the keys that could be questionable.
Many years ago, some ballot boxes were stolen from inside the Congress, where these were kept in custody, supposedly under tight security. Just like Fort Knox, we could say that the Congress is relatively secure, but as it turned out, somebody either gave the keys to someone from the outside. What could be worse than that, is that somebody might have opened it from the inside, disregarding the need for keys. In other words, it could have been an inside job.
Going back to what Mr. Relucio said, it is the systems administrator who is the king, because he holds the power to grant the rights to read from the system, or to write into it, either acting on his own, or under the authority of his superiors. He also has the power to command what data could be stored, or what data could be forwarded or transmitted. “Read and Write” and “Store and Forward” are two computer jargons that watchdogs of computerized systems should memorize.
Also going back to what Mr. Osias said, it is the systems administrator who has the power to decide which data to store and which data to forward and when to store and when to forward the data, indicating that data could actually be withheld due to human intervention, or conversely, it could be forwarded ahead of time, to show a trend that could influence the outcome of the voting, assuming that it is still ongoing at that time.
On the subject of Content being the king, we should all remember that the Voters List is the core of the COMELEC data, the “soul” so to speak. In a manner of speaking, it is the Infrastructure that is the “body” of the system. Even in layman terms, it would not be right for a “body” not to have a “soul”. In the past elections, so much importance has been given to the process of forwarding or transmitting the data, but how could we bring out the true will of the people if many qualified voters are not even in the Voters List?
In technical terms, the characters and images that are seen in the COMELEC Voter ID cards are just simply the printouts of the data that are stored in the Voters List. In other words, the ID cards are just derivatives of the Voters List, the latter being a database. Following the dictum of “Garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO), the Voters List could only produce ID cards for the citizens who are in the list. “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) is another dictum that we should bear in mind.
Tune in to Universal Access 2 to 3pm Monday to Sunday in DZRJ 810 KHZ and KA IKING LIVE! 6 to 7pm Thursdays in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 8 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text to +639997333011. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com. Coffee Clutch Fridays 3 to 6 PM at the Elks Club
posted by Ike Señeres at 10:54 PM
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