cschoellhorn's blog

NDItech has written extensively on the challenges and innovations of  election monitoring programs.. To understand and assess these election processes, partner groups rely on the transmission of rapid and reliable data from observers to data centers.  Getting information to the center quickly can be a challenge as observers are often located in far-off rural areas perhaps days from the capitol. As a result, most observation exercises rely on capturing information via paper forms and later using phone calls and SMS-based communication systems to transfer information. READ MORE »

Over the last few weeks in Nigeria, I had the opportunity to conduct capacity-building training sessions almost every day. While many of these sessions were enthusiastically received, discussions on digital security fell on deaf ears.

For one of these training sessions, I’m invited to train on “ICT,” and offered no further parameters. To be frank, I feel a bit like I’m Noah being asked to choose animals for his ark: decidedly “ICT” is too broad a category for training. So, I decide to prepare a few different topic areas and let the audience determine where we should focus our time.

The day arrives, I enter the room, and rows of eyes look out at me. I do my typical intro: why I’m here, what I’ve done, what my areas of expertise are, and I ask: READ MORE »

Nigerian non-profit Vote Not Fight has a compelling mission and a persuasive message. Their work: to empower youth to participate in Nigeria's elections and eschew election violence. Nigeria has a huge youth bulge who are disproportionately unemployed, and they are often the focus of groups looking to stir election violence for partisan political gains. READ MORE »

Readers here will be intimately familiar with the Elections Data Management tool, otherwise called Apollo, a name that I have realized will come to stay, despite the better messaging strategy pursued by the ICT team. Apollo will keep this name because of its almost mythical appearance in the midst of elections.  The Greek god Apollo was known as the god of light and truth, of prophecy, and healing. Much like the actual Apollo, the elections Apollo is made manifest from the ether to give meaning and direction to an otherwise amorphous and senseless deluge of information during a PVT. Information that is critical to the validation of an election, information with the ability, to stretch a metaphor, to heal, move, and transform societies. Apollo is pulled from the abyss of Github, thrown up on an Amazon server, deployed in the course of an hour, and reconstructed and refit for the needs of a unique observation mission within several days by the near herculean efforts of  NDI’s beloved Python developer, Tim Akinbo of TimbaObjects. However, the product life cycle of this tool may well need heavenly intervention to continue its current course of development. READ MORE »

This is my second week as a new Program Officer on the NDItech team.  I am excited to begin my time here and contribute to the team’s impressive array of work.

Looking ahead, I’m eager to work internally with NDI staff and externally with partner organizations to innovate new tools, strengthen mission-relevant activities in the field, and scale impacts already seen by technological programs that support democracy and the development of democratic institutions. To that end, I bring extensive knowledge of intergroup dynamics and dialogue facilitation, having a master’s degree in international negotiations, as well as a strong background in civic organizing and technology development. I’ve worked with two startups and enjoy a fast-paced, think-big approach to developing ideas: this is good as the NDItech team is thinking large and working rapidly on the execution of their DemTools initiative,  while incubating cutting-edge ideas around program execution and learning. READ MORE »