EC boss assures of security of biometric data
Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission who has presided over five successful elections in the country since 1992, has assured Ghanaians that steps have been taken to safeguard data that will be collated through the biometric regstration process.
Speaking in Accra Wednesday February 15, 2012 at a dialogue on preparations the Commission has made so far concerning Ghana’s upcoming general elections in December, he said the EC has set up a technical committee comprising staff of the Commission and representatives of the political parties to examine together with the vendor, ways of achieving data security.
To that end, the EC chairman, who will be presiding over Ghana’s sixth successive Parliamentary and Presidential elections on December 7, 2012, said registration will be done in the open and only at the polling station or other approved place, in the presence of party and other observers.
In order to ensure protection of data from unauthorised access, he said only the registration officials can open or close the computer assigned to their cluster, using their fingerprints programmed into the system, while it is also designed to record both the opening and closing times.
Dr. Afari-Gyan further divulged that to ensure the output of the registration process is consistent with the input, a print out of the persons registered will be given to the party agents present at the end of each day of registration.
Additionally, he revealed that to guard against data loss “the Commission has established away from the central database at its head office a data recovery centre, which will contain the same data as the central database.”
He however cautioned that as the kit cannot tell a Ghanaian and a foreigner apart or differentiate between the fingerprint of a minor and an adult, “It is only through vigilance that the registration of foreigners and minors could be prevented.”
The dialogue was organised by Editors Forum, Ghana (EFG) and jointly sponsored by the Electoral Commission and the Ghana Commercial Bank.
By Edmund Smith-Asante