The local elections and IT

IdlePhaedrus

IdlePhaedrus

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Bit annoyed, as I don't have TV, so am following the elections on-line.

The election web site (http://www.elections.org.za/content...ports.aspx?lEEtypeID=3&id=1427&name=Elections) appears to be overwhelmed with requests for information.

The News24 map, while rather pretty, appears to be quite inaccurate in some circumstances (they mistakenly swapped the ANC results with the DA results for PTA for a fair portion of the day), and slow to keep up.

And, State of SA on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/StateofSA) has stopped posting results because "The results are a good 5 hours old".

I see the IEC site is sponsored by Telkom, HP, Pro-curve Networking, Accenture and Internet Solutions. Pretty mixed bag, but pretty useless. Have they just sponsored, or have they contributed to the IT solution? Anyone know?

It is really pathetic that we cannot get real-time information on the election via the web. I am no guru, but I would happily give free time to make this better next time around, would anyone else like to contribute to such an effort? And are there any powers that be that would accept such an offer? RPM?

Phaedrus

In the meanwhile I am sticking with these two threads from MBB:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/335868-Make-DA-Circle-Bigger!!!
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/335770-Election-results-according-to-the-SABC...
 
IdlePhaedrus said:
Bit annoyed, as I don't have TV, so am following the elections on-line.

The election web site (http://www.elections.org.za/content...ports.aspx?lEEtypeID=3&id=1427&name=Elections) appears to be overwhelmed with requests for information.

The News24 map, while rather pretty, appears to be quite inaccurate in some circumstances (they mistakenly swapped the ANC results with the DA results for PTA for a fair portion of the day), and slow to keep up.

And, State of SA on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/StateofSA) has stopped posting results because "The results are a good 5 hours old".

I see the IEC site is sponsored by Telkom, HP, Pro-curve Networking, Accenture and Internet Solutions. Pretty mixed bag, but pretty useless. Have they just sponsored, or have they contributed to the IT solution? Anyone know?

It is really pathetic that we cannot get real-time information on the election via the web. I am no guru, but I would happily give free time to make this better next time around, would anyone else like to contribute to such an effort? And are there any powers that be that would accept such an offer? RPM?

Phaedrus

In the meanwhile I am sticking with these two threads from MBB:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/335868-Make-DA-Circle-Bigger!!!
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/335770-Election-results-according-to-the-SABC...
Click to expand...

Don't know if any of those companies does provide their products for the IEC, but I do see on the propaganda channel that they are using HP desktop's. I think this is an area where the IEC can and must up their game.
 
DWPTA said:
Don't know if any of those companies does provide their products for the IEC, but I do see on the propaganda channel that they are using HP desktop's. I think this is an area where the IEC can and must up their game.
Click to expand...

Agree, this is very frustrating. Have been up most of the night watching the results on the web and everything appears to be either wrong or out of date.
 
It shouldn't actually be that difficult to scale out their web solution to be able to temporarily handle more load.. IF they've designed it correctly.
 
B.O.F.H. said:
It shouldn't actually be that difficult to scale out their web solution to be able to temporarily handle more load.. IF they've designed it correctly.
Click to expand...

That's what I would have thought but obviously not.
 
From a web front end point of view..

They should be doing replication from whatever backend DB they're using to store the results... so that live queries don't impact on their capturing and processing....

The destination system should be beefy enuf to hand a fair chunk of read requests.. and be setup for predominantly that... Then a set of Virtual webservers that can automatically scale out should there be a need for more of them to handle the load....

Hell a decent LB should be able to handle the load from everyone in this country without breaking TOO much of a sweat..
 
B.O.F.H. said:
From a web front end point of view..

They should be doing replication from whatever backend DB they're using to store the results... so that live queries don't impact on their capturing and processing....

The destination system should be beefy enuf to hand a fair chunk of read requests.. and be setup for predominantly that... Then a set of Virtual webservers that can automatically scale out should there be a need for more of them to handle the load....

Hell a decent LB should be able to handle the load from everyone in this country without breaking TOO much of a sweat..
Click to expand...

Send your CV to them ;)
 
I have a feeling SITA are possibly involved.. but I dunno if they'll be involved in this web system... not that its immensely complicated, I just don't think its their area of expertise.
 
I agree - was hoping to view some hourly updates as the results came in, but apparently not!?
 
Nah... the way their system ended up working was that it would pick up pre-"printed" pdf or xls files that were dropped on their webserver for specific wards or metro's into a predefined folder structure.
There didn't seem to be anything that even vaguely related to a database lookup other than MAYBE for the ward lists... but even those I'm guessing were hardcoded.
 
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