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Verification

What is Verification: the process through which Uchaguzi evaluates information and determines how credible it is

Purpose: This wiki page will discuss Verification process for Uchaguzi, outline partnership roles, cite expectations, and explain what is the verification process. The accompanying wiki page will explain verification steps.

The Verification team:

  • Works with key partners (Creco and Peacenet) to verify reports for accuracy and to begin the feedback loop process
  • This group is responsible to be the sober, second check for:
    • Review and ensure all the details needed are available to approve this report (See criteria below)
    • Check with partners on the accuracy and next steps for the report
    • They will triangulate and search for corroborating reports, including mainstream media and trusted social media network

Background Resources

Learn about the importance of Verification and some of the strategies:

IMPORTANT: Ushahidi guide to verification (Please read)

Storyful's best practices for verifying social media (Margaret Looney)

Information Forensics: Five Case Studies (Patrick Meier)

Verifying Crowdsource Data Case Studies (Patrick Meier)

Information Forensics - Key tips and Steps (Patrick Meier)

Design Memo: Verifying Information from the Crowd  (Heather Ford) (note: the ICT4Peace plugin is not used for the Uchaguzi deployment)

Wikipedia Sources Managing Sources in rapidly evolving global news articles on the English Wikipedia.  (Heather Ford)

Categorization: Sometimes less is more (Jessica Heinzelman)
Crowdsourcing Mapping and Verification (video) (Anahi Ayala Iaccuci) 

Crisismapping (Standby Task Force  (video) (Helena Puig Larrauri)

Partners and Verification

Local partnerships:

We have several partners who we are working with to:

  • send reports to the platform
  • Lead efforts on on the ground verification of reports
  • lead efforts in response.
Official Partners

Uchaguzi has two key official partners who will provide reports from the field and work with Ushahidi on verification and response:

CRECO: Constitution and Reform Education Consortium.

Mandate: CRECO will deliver its vision through advocacy, civic engagement, institutional strengthening and partnership development.

Peacenet: Peace and Development Network Trust

Mandate: Peace-Net Kenya was mooted and founded by three organizations namely, Oxfam Great Britain (GB), the Mennonite Central Committee and the Anglican Development Desk. These organizations were collaborating in 1992 on relief provision to victims of politically motivated ethnic violence in Molo and Burnt Forest areas of Rift Valley.

How will Verification Work with Official Partners:

Creco will monitor issues and send reports, but won’t respond.  However, they may have updates regarding Uwiano (NSC) (election authorities) They will send SMS. Not likely that they will tweet or send web/email reports.

Peacenet has wide-reach across the country. The trained networks will send SMS to Ushahidi, and may locally followup themselves. They will followup with us after they review in the field. They will also monitor if Uwiano responds to update on "amplified" reports. They will send SMS. Not likely that they will tweet or send web/email reports.

If CRECO or Peacenet field participants don't have network connectivity, they may submit paper reports to field officers. They apparently have checkin times to send reports. If paper reports are collected, the field officers will email these to Uchaguzi. There will be a timelag in some areas without network connectivity. The scenario may be eg. 2 hours if haven’t heard from someone, they will get a followup call.

CRECO: all their monitors are pre-programmed into our system. CRECO will show in the system, or we will have a backup list of numbers. (This is linda’s election plugin) eg. 1 means polling station closed. trusted reporters

ACTION: verification and SMS teams need the back up list of the numbers.

Peacenet: they will give us raw feed of text messages, not firm yet, just need to sign paper. They have their own peace monitor short-codes. They are setting up the system. id - the number will tell us so that we can id by source in the platform. We will get their numbers in advance.  

ACTION: back up list of numbers.  we need the spreadsheets

About Roles of Official Partners for Verification

Official partners will have backend access to the platform via trained participants during Uchaguzi. We will work with them for verification and feedback. They are not given veto rights over content.  

About NSC / Uwiano and IEBC

NSC/Uwiano is an Unofficial Partner. (NSC is the government body, Uwiano is the platform they use. People use their names interchangeably)

In a lead-up to the 2010 national Referendum on Kenya’s Proposed Constitution, the National Steering Committee on Peace building and Conflict Management (NSC),  National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), PeaceNet Kenya and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) came together to establish a Platform for Peace dubbed UWIANO. UWIANO is a Swahili word that connotes “cohesion”. However, these four Partners were not only concerned with contributing towards delivery for a Peaceful National Referendum Process, but were keen to see to it that peace building and conflict management initiatives are scaled up towards the 2012 general elections and beyond. UWIANO therefore, is a conflict preventive strategy that provides space for a wide range of partners, actors and stakeholders to build synergy and leverage their efforts for conflict prevention and peace building in Kenya.

All Amplified info will be sent to Uwiano as urgent or critical. Ushahidi and Uchaguzi volunteers will followup directly with Uwiano on all amplified reports.

NSC/Uwiano will receive our amplified reports. We will followup with them on these reports. There is no firm agreed upon timeframe for followup on reports amplified. Uwiano *may* share verified reports with us. The volume may be up to 100 - 200 reports for the electoral period.  They may not share some urgent or critical items. Our system will identify these reports as NSC provided. Uwiano reports will sent directly into Uchaguzi with a tag as such.

THE NSC *May* have view rights to the platform for approved reports that have been amplified and require action. We will not be giving them backend access or veto rights.

More research on Uwiano

IEBC is the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission. They are in charge executing the election process. They work with NSC /Uwiano.

About Roles of Unofficial Partners for Verification

Unofficial partners are welcome to send information to the platform. They are not provided backend access to the platform. We may work with partners to verify and provide feedback to the platform.

Unofficial partners may include:
  1. Other members of the Election Observers Group (ELOG)
  2. The National Youth Bunge Association (NYBA) - activating it's network of 300,000 members most in key hotspots
  3. The National Youth Summit - 3000 members across the country
  4. Amkeni Wa Kenya - UNDP led umbrella ground of CSOs with member organisations around the country