Chris Kyriakides

An Electoral ICT Expert with an MSc(Computer Science) and 30+ years of professional work experience. A dual national -- born in Cyprus and educated in South Africa. Senior Electoral Technical Advisor well-versed in entire Electoral Cycle with specialization in: Electoral ICT Systems; Biometric Voter Registration; Candidate Registration Management Systems; Result Management Systems, Training, Electoral Law. Served on a numerous occasions as Technical Advisor on a number of official UNDP inter-country electoral assistance missions. Working exclusively in the domain of Elections since 2005. Extensive hands on experience across entire ICT domain (covering posts from Software Developer, Software Engineer, Lecturer, IT Architect, IT Manager and CIO) and sizable knowledge of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, first-world and third-world working environments. Spearheaded official VR Tech Assistance missions to a number of countries, as well as, VR equip procurement exercises as large as $8m USD. Provided technical support in the deployment and retrieval of ICT equipment to a value in excess of $85m USD . Career Highlights & Achievements (Small Sample): ------------------------------------------------ Architect of solar-powered Voter Registration kit specs utilized in Tanzania – these were the 1st-ever exclusively solar-powered VR kits in the world used in Biometric Voter Registration; great results were achieved. Original design (with minor modifications) was re-used with even greater success in Liberia. Electoral IT Expert for Guinea. Architect of the Guinean Voter Registration System Design. Introduced functional requirements into biometric VR kits so as to reduce the number of duplicate Voter Registrations in the field; duplicate registrations were exceptionally low (<0.8%). Low number of duplicates yields to significant savings in central data processing costs and timelines. A number of these innovative design specifications are now appearing as standard in many IT-based biometric VR Systems. I was the first-person to introduce what is now being commonly referred to as a "mini-AFIS" system for BVR Kits! This has become a de-facto standard functionality in BVR Kits with most experts and suppliers not really knowing where it came from. Managed IT component of the largest Candidate Registration exercise ever supported by UNDP (in Dem Rep of Congo -- at completion this amounted to ±25,000 Candidates with ±300 political parties) In DRC I developed an early version of my Candidate Registration System. This allowed the instantaneous generation of Ballot Paper content (including Candidate Photos, Names, Political Party Logos and Political Party abbreviations) in the precise order and layout as it would appear on the official ballot paper. The system could also auto-generate Polling Station Results Forms and Tally Sheets with the Candidates details (name and party) already pre-filled in and in the precise order that it would appear in the ballot paper. I shared this framework with another supporting Election Commission along with my plans to use it in future to develop a Results Management System that displayed online a scanned Polling Station Results Form side-by-side with its textual database data entries. This was implemented in 2009 and in 2011 it earned the commission a United Nations Public Service Award (UNPSA) for Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service. In 2010, I managed the successful development and deployment of not one but rather two Result Management Systems and two Candidate Registration Management Systems in the same electoral year! This in Tanzania for the National Election Commission (NEC) and the Zanzibari Election Commission (ZEC) -- essentially two commissions that follow 2 partially similar sets of electoral laws with numerous variations. Development of an extensive Training Manual for Electoral Officers and an accompanying training video broken into chapters that span a total of about 1 hour and 40 mins -- this involved about 40 to 50 actors and BTS crew. Although this was my first attempt at a training production of this nature and magnitude, the video and manual were commented for their technical accuracy and extensive coverage of key issues pertinent to electoral officers' polling day training. In drawing up the training manual amendments and the script for this video I noted significant inconsistencies in the electoral law brought on by repeated past revisions of the law. In fact, 80% of Electoral Law amendments made in that Electoral Cycle were made in-line with issues that I personally noted and lobbied for through two separate legal teams -- one serving the EMB and the other the MoJ. • ZEC Electoral Officer Training Video – this is an extensive training video spanning +- 1h 40min and is targeted at Polling Day Electoral Officials (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgFym5-sX1twgCLMzonuBoqDZzwhu_7KO&fbclid=IwAR1P_f-gn9gWotEJGJRfp55kyU2NUy_dLu8JPtqd89fca5F28sBrjA8YCAU ) • Electoral Officers Manual In 2015 I was deployed under an Emergency Electoral Assistance Mission. I arrived in country only 11 days before polling day. During this assignment, I developed a Results Tabulation Solution in less than 2 days! My solution was used by the Office of the CEO as a parallel tabulation system to the pre-existing results processing system that was around for several years by that time. Incredibly, my software solution and process picked up a significant number of result form data discrepancies -- by contrast the official system failed to detected any of these issues. The outgoing government lost be a narrow margin and insisted on a regional body to carry an extensive Audit of the results announced by the EMB. After careful examination of the two systems' results datasets, the EMB selected my system's dataset for submission to the Audit. It passed with flying colours!!! Not bad for a solution developed in just over 24 hours and training of data-entry clerks taking place while voters were casting their votes outside!!!

Thematic Areas of Expertise