In one of my early posting, I was expressing my joy, congratulating any University student in Bangladesh. By simple math each of them is “one in a hundred”. We have 44 lac 1st graders enrolled in 2005 and about 50 thousand 1st year students around the country based on BANBEIS http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/ statistics. So every University going student made the biggest hurdle, he secured a place in one of the Universities. Now he will prepare himself on how to be a better human being. He will argue and learn how to prepare him for the challenges of life in Bangladesh. He will learn how to resource himself to be able to earn a decent living. This process will continue and will contribute to the nation building in one way or other.
The moment a student walks into the University to study, the university opens up the doors of unlimited study materials. He goes to his area of specialization and starts building his growth of knowledge in a specific area of concentration and the lecturer guides him along the way. In this writing, I would like to concentrate my focus on how to bring the world of knowledge and information to him. We all know the answer: bring the internet to him; but it is expensive and infrastructure need to be there, are not available, student will be exposed to porn sites, student will learn bad thing more than the good things. Though there is plenty of parental control software available to limit the porn site access. These are some of the challenges.
Let’s jump to 10 years from now. Let’s visualize what is happening around the Universities in Bangladesh. Students of Statistics and Marketing of Dhaka University are modeling the NASDAQ indexes. They are predicting comparative growth of DOW chemicals and NASDAQ. A group of students is proposing a real time market analysis tools for Technology companies or Manufacturing sectors. Another group of students from the Institute of Business Management, researching on portfolio managements for some hedge funds. They are ready to serve customers in the geographically other part of the world.
Let us visit Dhaka Medical College. DMC in collaboration with North South University researched and developed a managed healthcare scheme. They did extensive research with National Institute of Health (http:// http://www.nih.gov/) using their dedicated backbone of mirrored network of servers (which is full of their research material freely available through the internet). Policy makers of Bangladesh made a commitment to train world class Nurses to capitalize the future growth of medical tourism in Bangladesh. The policy encouraged the medical professionals and business entities to invest in better health care facilities and nursing institutes. They provided education to gain respect of Nursing as a profession. Bangladesh now outsource Nurses around the globe, not to mention their outstanding service in the country as well.
In another development, Bangladesh Agricultural University students working along side with the students of BRAC University on a promising bioengineered seed to grow in barren lands of Sahara. They developed a new drink from pineapple (available in abundance in Bangladesh), which turned into a world wide sensation because of its use in weight management in the developed world. The students of these Universities published numerous articles in Amber Waves magazine (http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/) and doing joint research with USDA (http://www.usda.gov/).
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) have pioneered innovative schemes of database mirroring. This innovation came from the students’ extensive research on internet data sharing. Their expertises attract Google and myspace to setup student research centre in the Robert Noice simulation lab building. In the software arena Students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology developed a program suits which gives you a generic package of application forms for various schools and colleges, archive of all the exam papers for various schools and colleges for various grades. They are text based and thereby easily searchable. They also developed an online schools system partnering with free online Global Education and Learning Community (http://www.curriki.org/). There mission is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula and it's all free! They believe that access to knowledge and learning tools is a basic right of every child. Their goal is to make curricula and learning resources available to everyone.
Let me return from my dream to reality. The vision that I just travel through could become reality with proper planning and execution. It may not be easy; but it is very possible. To begin with, we have to guarantee easy access to global media to every University going students.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and BTTB need to ensure dedicated broadband service to every student in every University of Bangladesh. They may enforce to contribute 5% of the revenue from all the telecom companies in business in Bangladesh to fund this initiative.
Universities may offer each student a PC or Laptop like classmate PC or the equivalent during their registration process. Universities may work with various funding agencies, NGOs or foundations for the funding of these PCs. They may as well work with various bank and financial agencies for a package of installment payable by each student in absence of funding from non profit organizations. A student may pay as low as 500 Taka per month for a laptop during his full length of study. For this scheme we do not need any funding, we can work out with a bank for this venture. For funding example, Dhaka University has 30000 students. Dhaka University may search for a grant of 6 million dollars from Intel Corporation, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Ford Foundation etc for closing the digital divide. They may purchase 30,000 PCs, one for each student. BTTB will ensure the WiFi or broadband connectivity though its submarine fiber optic networks.
There are 73 universities in Bangladesh. Out of these, 21 universities are in the public sector, while the other 52 are in the private sector. Out of 21 public sector universities, 19 universities provide regular classroom instruction facilities and services. Each of them may take initiatives to get grant and design their intranet and the gateway to internet. BTTB may just drop the extension of submarine cable and fiber to the nearest node. Again, government may impose a mandatory 5% revenue contribution from the entire telecom provider operating in Bangladesh including BTTB to fund such a connectivity project.
No University will benefit from the online capability more than the National University of Bangladesh. The National University caters the general education at graduate and post-graduate level in colleges/institutions which were affiliated to different public universities since independence. About one million students are studying in more than 1600 colleges/institutions affiliated to this university. The National University is expanding in terms of number of students, courses and institutions day by day. To day this university plays the most significant role to provide opportunities for higher education among the students living especially in rural and semi-urban areas. A dedicated connectivity and access to the internet with a computer in students possession may do more then the education. The student will have the vision.
How do we find the funding? I already discussed 5% telecom revenue for the connectivity solution. We need USD$ 40 million for 200,000 cheapest laptops. The hardware funding may come from various foundations and NGOs. Universities need to research for that. Again a dedicated internet may help the research process. There is a lot of funding available to close the digital divide. One of the cheapest laptop designed for educational purpose is classmate PC designed by Intel Corporation. There are 700,000 of them will be delivered to Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) with fully-functional Intel-powered PCs into the hands of students all across Pakistan by 2009.
I thereby propose, let us make a policy decision to hand an internet enabled PC or laptop to every University going students in Bangladesh. We can do it in small steps or a big stride. We have ~200,000 students currently studying in any Universities in Bangladesh. The Universities may collaborate and make a consortium for such computerization project. May I suggest the honorable Vice Chancellors of All the Universities around the country to exchange emails regarding the formation of such consortium? Call a meeting to distribute the task of funding proposal. We already laid out the plan as you read through the blog.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Cheers for every University going students of Bangladesh
The moment a student walks into the University to study, the university opens up the doors of unlimited study materials. He goes to his area of specialization and starts building his knowledge growth on that area and the lecturer guides him along the way. Can we give the student more? How about bringing the internet to him? How about ensuring that his access to the internet is guaranteed? What policy maker can do for this student? I will write more on this in my posting later sometime. In this posting I would like to acknowledge the achievement done by every University going students in Bangladesh.
Let me give you a little bit back ground of our education ladder and how our children climb up to the University. Based on 2005 statistics from BANBEIS (http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/), in primary education level, net enrolment rate of children from age 6-10 is 87%. Outstanding job! Congratulation Bangladesh! You showed you can do it and we are proud of this achievement.
In 2005, we had a population of (170 lac) 17 million children of that age group (6-10) and 87% of them enrolled in primary education. I know you may have questions about quality of education, end of the year how many remain, etc. These are valid questions; but I will take a moment just to enjoy the enrolment success. This is a huge step. If it continues we will pull our literacy rate from 45% to 87% within this generation.
Now the nest step is to keep them in the school. We loose 50% of these kids at the end of fifth Grade, which has an enrolment of 2.6 million. That is a very big loss. We have to do a socio-economic research to identify the root cause of these losses. I intend to write my thought about it in near future. The similar trend is followed in secondary schools, 50% drop outs until they reach to tenth grade, 2 million in 6th grade down to 1 million in 10th grade. Total enrolment of secondary education age group is little more than (70 lac) 7 million.
Based on 2005 BANBEIS data, total number of students studying among 74 universities (21 public and 53 private) 207577; about 24% are female 49867. 1st year University students may be 52 to 70 thousand, which accounted for 5% of the students of the 10th grade. My forecast at this rate by the end of year 2009, we will have 359646 (35 Lac) in University enrollment.
Now to summarize the education ladder fall offs (or should I say climb up!), in 2005 we have more then 44 lac students enrolled in 1st grade and in the same year in Bangladesh we have around little more than 50 thousand enrolled in any University in Bangladesh. Each of the students in any University in Bangladesh came from a thousand of kids going to 1st grade.
I waited few minutes to think about, “what should write next?” It is a catastrophic loss. 99 students who enrolled in 1st grade fall off to the path to University. On the other hand I have one student who is out of 100. Outstanding! I would say cheers for any student in any University in Bangladesh, no matter what; you are one in a thousand! Celebrate!!
Let me give you a little bit back ground of our education ladder and how our children climb up to the University. Based on 2005 statistics from BANBEIS (http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/), in primary education level, net enrolment rate of children from age 6-10 is 87%. Outstanding job! Congratulation Bangladesh! You showed you can do it and we are proud of this achievement.
In 2005, we had a population of (170 lac) 17 million children of that age group (6-10) and 87% of them enrolled in primary education. I know you may have questions about quality of education, end of the year how many remain, etc. These are valid questions; but I will take a moment just to enjoy the enrolment success. This is a huge step. If it continues we will pull our literacy rate from 45% to 87% within this generation.
Now the nest step is to keep them in the school. We loose 50% of these kids at the end of fifth Grade, which has an enrolment of 2.6 million. That is a very big loss. We have to do a socio-economic research to identify the root cause of these losses. I intend to write my thought about it in near future. The similar trend is followed in secondary schools, 50% drop outs until they reach to tenth grade, 2 million in 6th grade down to 1 million in 10th grade. Total enrolment of secondary education age group is little more than (70 lac) 7 million.
Based on 2005 BANBEIS data, total number of students studying among 74 universities (21 public and 53 private) 207577; about 24% are female 49867. 1st year University students may be 52 to 70 thousand, which accounted for 5% of the students of the 10th grade. My forecast at this rate by the end of year 2009, we will have 359646 (35 Lac) in University enrollment.
Now to summarize the education ladder fall offs (or should I say climb up!), in 2005 we have more then 44 lac students enrolled in 1st grade and in the same year in Bangladesh we have around little more than 50 thousand enrolled in any University in Bangladesh. Each of the students in any University in Bangladesh came from a thousand of kids going to 1st grade.
I waited few minutes to think about, “what should write next?” It is a catastrophic loss. 99 students who enrolled in 1st grade fall off to the path to University. On the other hand I have one student who is out of 100. Outstanding! I would say cheers for any student in any University in Bangladesh, no matter what; you are one in a thousand! Celebrate!!
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
A journey to basic specification of Voter ID digitization project:Update
I investigated the feasibility of getting classmate PC customized with a built-in camera and a biometric ID detection device snapped into the keyboard. These are very simple addition to the system configuration and platform designer can easily do it.
However it may require 12-18 months of design-validation-testing-production-delivery cycle. Moreover for a big company to develop this would require an order of million pieces to do it cost effectively.
This brings me to a concept of a basic dedicate interface for ID verification system. UN can be a partner of this initiative. We have election around the African continents as well as the developing countries in Asia and South America, where election rigging is a common phenomenon. The ID verification part will solve at least one part of the problem.
Now let’s get back to immediate challenge of the voter ID detection system for the upcoming election in Bangladesh. We can still use classmate PC, along with USB attachment of finger print detection device and a digital camera.
I am recommending classmate PC, because it is durable and dust, dart proof, no hard drive in it, has 2 GB flash (which will be able to get 1 GB of data collection and 1 GB of OS). However it can be upgraded to 4 GB or more. I don’t think we need more to collect data. In one day period an agent may not be able to collect more than 1/2GB of data.
However for the polling station we need to have all the data of that specific polling station in our fingertips. So the polling stations need a computer with hard drive and access to the central data base for back up.
I look forward to write more once the EC publish their requirements. Please refer to my initial posting to get more below.
http://abuabdullah-sohel.blogspot.com/2007/05/specifications-of-voter-registration.html
However it may require 12-18 months of design-validation-testing-production-delivery cycle. Moreover for a big company to develop this would require an order of million pieces to do it cost effectively.
This brings me to a concept of a basic dedicate interface for ID verification system. UN can be a partner of this initiative. We have election around the African continents as well as the developing countries in Asia and South America, where election rigging is a common phenomenon. The ID verification part will solve at least one part of the problem.
Now let’s get back to immediate challenge of the voter ID detection system for the upcoming election in Bangladesh. We can still use classmate PC, along with USB attachment of finger print detection device and a digital camera.
I am recommending classmate PC, because it is durable and dust, dart proof, no hard drive in it, has 2 GB flash (which will be able to get 1 GB of data collection and 1 GB of OS). However it can be upgraded to 4 GB or more. I don’t think we need more to collect data. In one day period an agent may not be able to collect more than 1/2GB of data.
However for the polling station we need to have all the data of that specific polling station in our fingertips. So the polling stations need a computer with hard drive and access to the central data base for back up.
I look forward to write more once the EC publish their requirements. Please refer to my initial posting to get more below.
http://abuabdullah-sohel.blogspot.com/2007/05/specifications-of-voter-registration.html
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Human Capital: Easy access to Broadband may help
Human capital, a common asset among China India and Bangladesh, how can we turn this asset into revenue generation machine?
A friend of mine brings my attention to a Silicon India Article “Free broadband within 2 yrs”. The report writes that. “The Indian government plans to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed connectivity by 2009, through the state owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL” I ask myself why do government plans to give such free service when it can collect tons of revenue issuing licenses and selling bandwidth.
Immediately I visited BTTB http://www.bttb.gov.bd/ and scanned through their pages to get myself educated regarding their approach towards providing internet connectivity. “BTTB is entrusted with all the tasks related to the submarine cable in the national and international level”. Yeah, this makes sense, while Indian government is planning on free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second, BTTB is making more then 50 lacs (5 Million) taka for the same bandwidth available in 41 districts for “Leased Internet Access” per port. A smart move indeed! However Educational institutions will get 50% discount listed in their website “Rates”.
I should be fare when I compare an apple to (not an) apple. As Indians are multilingual they adopted English along with Hindi to break the language barrier. Not to mention that as a nation they pay more attention towards their education. That education helped the overwhelming manpower resources to capitalize the internet revolution. Hence translate in the bottom-line of their earning. Now India become the wholesale nation of outsourcing and IT support. To satisfy the basic rule of economics, a nation has to do what it can do most cost effectively compared to the countries around the world. Thereby to secure India’s position in the global outsourcing market and to empower the innovation of the next generation of Indians, India has to provide its citizen easy access to the Internet community. What are the alternatives of guaranteed internet access other than providing it free? Free, as it is like air and the sky, accessible to every citizen.
In Bangladesh, we have one thing in abundance, people, too many of them. We do not have natural resources for this highly dense country; however, we can turn our population into natural resources. I am not proposing anything radical or outrageous here. We have example in our next door. Look at China; they turn their people in to natural resources. China is the foundry of (almost everything or anything) the globe. They import all the natural recourses such as iron ore and turned into a finish product like steel. Today they are one of the world’s biggest producers of steel; not to mention one of the world’s biggest consumers of metal as well to make other finished product. If you just compare the product made in China in shopping malls and hardware markets around Bangladesh for last 10-15 years; you will be amazed by the improvement they made ensuring the quality of any specific product. Along with the quality, they are climbing the value chain. Demanding more buck for their quality products.
Look at India; they are getting highest return on investment per IT professional. Outsourcing and data entry are just becoming cash cow for India. In economic sense, I would compare them with the service provided by our Garment Industry. Garment industry receives an order, processes it and sends it back to the originating country which needed the service. Similarly any back office, payroll, IT service request from the developed world like USA, UK send to India. Indian IT professionals analyze and solve the problem. Send the requested service with a resolution. Only difference is that IT professional receives a big buck for their services. Well they deserve it; they prudently invested on human resources development and this human capital delivers high margin products. We at times, quick to conclude that, the expatriate Indians and the private business are the one who contributed to India’s leadership in IT industry.
Exploration, planning, development and production are the four steps to make a product. India’s IT industry is now in production mode and I am sure the expatriates and the private sector are the main driving force in this stage of production. However the exploration, planning and development phases are done prudently by the consortium of government, dedicated technocrats, visionary and influential leaders of various cadre including professionals, educators and political leaders. The IITs, technical colleges and institutes and comprehensive academics curricula practiced by the Universities and Schools around India contributed to the development phase. Government helped them not by forcing; but by eliminating road blocks from their path of progression. The continuation of the government encouragement is in action as of today. All telecom operators in India have to contribute 5% of their revenue to a special fund call “Universal Service Obligation Fund” (USOF). USOF will pay for the free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2MB per second across the country.
Everyday is slowing us down because we are not adapting technologies to develop human capital. There is a lot more to write about human capital development. I look forward to write some more thoughts about this issue. However, If you are still reading then, consider we are surfing the exploration phase. Please join me, put your ideas about the planning phase. The biggest challenge is the language barrier. We have done enough damage by removing English from the everyday education. We have to get out of the mean idea of learning only one language. Human being has innate capability of learning multiple languages. Look at any European country. There will never be a perfect time. Everyday is a good day to start. Lets say ~10-20% population has some exposure to English to communicate and surf Internet. We could start with our limited capacity of English. Start demanding more English, more access to Internet, free access to broadband. Do this wherever you study, wherever you work, wherever you pass time. Put your idea into a plan. Those plans will push us to the next phase of development, the development of human capital in Bangladesh.
A friend of mine brings my attention to a Silicon India Article “Free broadband within 2 yrs”. The report writes that. “The Indian government plans to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed connectivity by 2009, through the state owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL” I ask myself why do government plans to give such free service when it can collect tons of revenue issuing licenses and selling bandwidth.
Immediately I visited BTTB http://www.bttb.gov.bd/ and scanned through their pages to get myself educated regarding their approach towards providing internet connectivity. “BTTB is entrusted with all the tasks related to the submarine cable in the national and international level”. Yeah, this makes sense, while Indian government is planning on free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second, BTTB is making more then 50 lacs (5 Million) taka for the same bandwidth available in 41 districts for “Leased Internet Access” per port. A smart move indeed! However Educational institutions will get 50% discount listed in their website “Rates”.
I should be fare when I compare an apple to (not an) apple. As Indians are multilingual they adopted English along with Hindi to break the language barrier. Not to mention that as a nation they pay more attention towards their education. That education helped the overwhelming manpower resources to capitalize the internet revolution. Hence translate in the bottom-line of their earning. Now India become the wholesale nation of outsourcing and IT support. To satisfy the basic rule of economics, a nation has to do what it can do most cost effectively compared to the countries around the world. Thereby to secure India’s position in the global outsourcing market and to empower the innovation of the next generation of Indians, India has to provide its citizen easy access to the Internet community. What are the alternatives of guaranteed internet access other than providing it free? Free, as it is like air and the sky, accessible to every citizen.
In Bangladesh, we have one thing in abundance, people, too many of them. We do not have natural resources for this highly dense country; however, we can turn our population into natural resources. I am not proposing anything radical or outrageous here. We have example in our next door. Look at China; they turn their people in to natural resources. China is the foundry of (almost everything or anything) the globe. They import all the natural recourses such as iron ore and turned into a finish product like steel. Today they are one of the world’s biggest producers of steel; not to mention one of the world’s biggest consumers of metal as well to make other finished product. If you just compare the product made in China in shopping malls and hardware markets around Bangladesh for last 10-15 years; you will be amazed by the improvement they made ensuring the quality of any specific product. Along with the quality, they are climbing the value chain. Demanding more buck for their quality products.
Look at India; they are getting highest return on investment per IT professional. Outsourcing and data entry are just becoming cash cow for India. In economic sense, I would compare them with the service provided by our Garment Industry. Garment industry receives an order, processes it and sends it back to the originating country which needed the service. Similarly any back office, payroll, IT service request from the developed world like USA, UK send to India. Indian IT professionals analyze and solve the problem. Send the requested service with a resolution. Only difference is that IT professional receives a big buck for their services. Well they deserve it; they prudently invested on human resources development and this human capital delivers high margin products. We at times, quick to conclude that, the expatriate Indians and the private business are the one who contributed to India’s leadership in IT industry.
Exploration, planning, development and production are the four steps to make a product. India’s IT industry is now in production mode and I am sure the expatriates and the private sector are the main driving force in this stage of production. However the exploration, planning and development phases are done prudently by the consortium of government, dedicated technocrats, visionary and influential leaders of various cadre including professionals, educators and political leaders. The IITs, technical colleges and institutes and comprehensive academics curricula practiced by the Universities and Schools around India contributed to the development phase. Government helped them not by forcing; but by eliminating road blocks from their path of progression. The continuation of the government encouragement is in action as of today. All telecom operators in India have to contribute 5% of their revenue to a special fund call “Universal Service Obligation Fund” (USOF). USOF will pay for the free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2MB per second across the country.
Everyday is slowing us down because we are not adapting technologies to develop human capital. There is a lot more to write about human capital development. I look forward to write some more thoughts about this issue. However, If you are still reading then, consider we are surfing the exploration phase. Please join me, put your ideas about the planning phase. The biggest challenge is the language barrier. We have done enough damage by removing English from the everyday education. We have to get out of the mean idea of learning only one language. Human being has innate capability of learning multiple languages. Look at any European country. There will never be a perfect time. Everyday is a good day to start. Lets say ~10-20% population has some exposure to English to communicate and surf Internet. We could start with our limited capacity of English. Start demanding more English, more access to Internet, free access to broadband. Do this wherever you study, wherever you work, wherever you pass time. Put your idea into a plan. Those plans will push us to the next phase of development, the development of human capital in Bangladesh.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
A journey to basic specification of Voter ID digitization project
I go to my polling station during the Election Day, tell my name and address to the polling agent, he verifies that with the voter list. Then I cast my vote. I exercise my fundamental right of a citizen, done. What are all these fuzz about it? Ok I get it. Somebody intentionally compromise the voter list and now it does not have my name and address; however it has the names of “Tom, Dick and Harry” in a factious address and “Dobir, Sabir and kabir” in my address. Somebody in my polling station cast those votes for a specific candidate. Aa-ha, this is election engineering. I am screwed; I don’t get to exercise my fundamental rights.
Hmm, we need to fix this; but should it take 18 months to do a voter registration with photo ID and execute election? 18 months is a long time, 550 days. If I were to employ 1000 registrar with a digital camera and a laptop to shoot a digital photo and collect their name and address then lets say each of the registrar collects 50 of the voter details in the list, then end of the day I have 50,000 enlisted. Suppose there are 94 million qualified voters, (according to sept 1, 2006; http://www.ecs.gov.bd/aboutbec.php3) then it would take 1880 days; ops that is 63 months. I got my math wrong, which is way too long; let me redo the math, I would hire 10,000 registrars to do the job. This will take 6 months 10 days. Then use next couple of months to test the system, do a mock practice, publish the entire voter list and set the date for election.
However the task of compiling a voter list with photo ID is not as simple as it sounds. In Bangladesh, we have diverse population and cultural sensitivity that we have to acknowledge. Let us take an example of shooting a digital camera to capture the photo for the voter ID. Female voter may cover their hair or may wear a lot of makeup. These changes may confuse the polling agent during the day of election. Similarly for male voter, long hair, beard, long beard, various types of beard may as well confuse identification.
As far as I know, there are 96980 voter areas in 4500 Union of 83 district election offices. Based on this number, assume that we have the same number of agents to collect the voter information and to enlist the voter. Suppose, in the morning they start door to door. They came to my home. We are three brothers, three sisters and our parents. We all live in the same house and are at home during the time agent came. Agent captures a photo for each of us. Then he downloads the photographs to his laptop. He enters the address of our house. Next he brings up my photo; the address automatically comes up and he then asks my name, date of birth etc. Everything about me listed (hashed in database terms) against my photo. The agent then enters my brother’s details into his laptop and so on. The agent saves all the information in his laptop. End of the day he uploads all the data in a server; which is accessible from his office.
I just portrayed above a simplified version of voter registration. Let us add one little complexity which I mention in my second paragraph about condition of photograph; long hair, beard, makeup, hair cover etc may challenge visual identification verification process. Let us assume that the laptop, agent is using can capture finger prints. When the agent brings up my photo, he asked me to roll my thumb or the middle finger to the finger print capturing device or biometric device. This process enters one more identification entry to my hashed data. During the Election Day, I go to the polling station to cast my vote. I roll my finger to the same biometric device of the laptop; it brings up my photo, address, date of birth from the database. The attending Polling officer looks at my photo and asks my address for further verification. What happens here is that I sweep my finger to search the database for my photo along with all my information. However, this database can be mirrored and accessed directly from the server instantaneously or for simplicity, may be downloaded to the attending polling officers’ laptop.
Embracing technology to digitize Voter registration and Identity verification during the election at the polling station is a very simple process. All you have to do is two things, (1) Enlisting every voter during voter registration as explained; (2) Error proof identification verification of every voter at the polling station during the Election Day. I know the consultants hired by the election commission have not started their office yet, they have not had a meeting to understand the requirements of the election commission. Once they understand the requirements of EC, I have full confidence at least one consultant that I know of that they will provide us a comprehensive specification of the entire infrastructure. However, based on what I just sketched above, what are the specifications of the computing infrastructure that we need?
1. A human interface, capable of capturing finger prints, digital photo and relevant data (name, address, dob etc). A similar laptop like Intel World Ahead programs’ classmate PC with added feature like biometric identification device embedded with the keyboard and a built-in digital camera.
2. A set of mirror servers which could be LANed utilizing our fiber optic network where available; For places where LAN is not available, adoption of few Wi-max antennas can be use to complete the connectivity gaps.
3. A searchable database, which could be locally developed as I already mention the simplified specification.
That’s it we are done. I intentionally left out the national ID part. It is the responsibility of the constitution experts to come up with the specification of what they want to list under the national ID. It will be hard to avoid the temptation of becoming a Military (Police) state with all this information freely available at fingertips. However, in technical point of view, national ID can be easily done during the voter registration process. All the relevant information with the photo is available in the database, there by the agent may ask the citizen to collect a laminated national ID from the distribution center.
Hmm, we need to fix this; but should it take 18 months to do a voter registration with photo ID and execute election? 18 months is a long time, 550 days. If I were to employ 1000 registrar with a digital camera and a laptop to shoot a digital photo and collect their name and address then lets say each of the registrar collects 50 of the voter details in the list, then end of the day I have 50,000 enlisted. Suppose there are 94 million qualified voters, (according to sept 1, 2006; http://www.ecs.gov.bd/aboutbec.php3) then it would take 1880 days; ops that is 63 months. I got my math wrong, which is way too long; let me redo the math, I would hire 10,000 registrars to do the job. This will take 6 months 10 days. Then use next couple of months to test the system, do a mock practice, publish the entire voter list and set the date for election.
However the task of compiling a voter list with photo ID is not as simple as it sounds. In Bangladesh, we have diverse population and cultural sensitivity that we have to acknowledge. Let us take an example of shooting a digital camera to capture the photo for the voter ID. Female voter may cover their hair or may wear a lot of makeup. These changes may confuse the polling agent during the day of election. Similarly for male voter, long hair, beard, long beard, various types of beard may as well confuse identification.
As far as I know, there are 96980 voter areas in 4500 Union of 83 district election offices. Based on this number, assume that we have the same number of agents to collect the voter information and to enlist the voter. Suppose, in the morning they start door to door. They came to my home. We are three brothers, three sisters and our parents. We all live in the same house and are at home during the time agent came. Agent captures a photo for each of us. Then he downloads the photographs to his laptop. He enters the address of our house. Next he brings up my photo; the address automatically comes up and he then asks my name, date of birth etc. Everything about me listed (hashed in database terms) against my photo. The agent then enters my brother’s details into his laptop and so on. The agent saves all the information in his laptop. End of the day he uploads all the data in a server; which is accessible from his office.
I just portrayed above a simplified version of voter registration. Let us add one little complexity which I mention in my second paragraph about condition of photograph; long hair, beard, makeup, hair cover etc may challenge visual identification verification process. Let us assume that the laptop, agent is using can capture finger prints. When the agent brings up my photo, he asked me to roll my thumb or the middle finger to the finger print capturing device or biometric device. This process enters one more identification entry to my hashed data. During the Election Day, I go to the polling station to cast my vote. I roll my finger to the same biometric device of the laptop; it brings up my photo, address, date of birth from the database. The attending Polling officer looks at my photo and asks my address for further verification. What happens here is that I sweep my finger to search the database for my photo along with all my information. However, this database can be mirrored and accessed directly from the server instantaneously or for simplicity, may be downloaded to the attending polling officers’ laptop.
Embracing technology to digitize Voter registration and Identity verification during the election at the polling station is a very simple process. All you have to do is two things, (1) Enlisting every voter during voter registration as explained; (2) Error proof identification verification of every voter at the polling station during the Election Day. I know the consultants hired by the election commission have not started their office yet, they have not had a meeting to understand the requirements of the election commission. Once they understand the requirements of EC, I have full confidence at least one consultant that I know of that they will provide us a comprehensive specification of the entire infrastructure. However, based on what I just sketched above, what are the specifications of the computing infrastructure that we need?
1. A human interface, capable of capturing finger prints, digital photo and relevant data (name, address, dob etc). A similar laptop like Intel World Ahead programs’ classmate PC with added feature like biometric identification device embedded with the keyboard and a built-in digital camera.
2. A set of mirror servers which could be LANed utilizing our fiber optic network where available; For places where LAN is not available, adoption of few Wi-max antennas can be use to complete the connectivity gaps.
3. A searchable database, which could be locally developed as I already mention the simplified specification.
That’s it we are done. I intentionally left out the national ID part. It is the responsibility of the constitution experts to come up with the specification of what they want to list under the national ID. It will be hard to avoid the temptation of becoming a Military (Police) state with all this information freely available at fingertips. However, in technical point of view, national ID can be easily done during the voter registration process. All the relevant information with the photo is available in the database, there by the agent may ask the citizen to collect a laminated national ID from the distribution center.
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