Barely a week after daring hackers to crack its electoral systems, Kenya’s electoral body the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has its website down.
A statement from IEBC explains the site went down caused by “a sudden surge in the online applications for clerk jobs.”
“Oops! our servers are overwhelmed by online applications for VR clerk jobs. Sorry but don’t worry we are increasing the capacity. Meanwhile try, if you can, to log in at some less busy time- very early or late in the day,” IEBC said on their Facebook page.
IEBC recently announced over 2900 vacancies for the position of registration clerks who will be in-charge of biometric voter registration in 1450 county assembly wards across Kenya’s 47 counties. They invited qualified applicants to fill applications online at Iebc.or.ke/careers by 29th July 2012.
The news spread through social m sites including Twitter and Facebook, something that has become a norm in Kenya. This in turn led to a sudden increase in the traffic to the websites as job seekers tried to access the application form, according to a source.
This has led many people to question the Electoral body’s ability to incorporate technology into their operations, especially when voters will be seeking information on the voting processes and the outcome of the General Election via its website. The elections are scheduled for March 4, 2013.
Earlier this week, HumanIPO carried out a story reporting IEBC saying that it will invite hackers later in the year to tamper with its electronic system, in a bid to assure voters of “maximum security.”
By the time of publishing this article, the website was still inaccessible. HumanIPO has contacted the IEBC for comments and will update this report.
