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Using mobile tech to help Libya's fledgling democracy

 

 A Libyan woman casts her ballot at a polling station during legislative elections in the capital Tripoli on June 25, 2014. (MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/Getty Images)

Earlier today, Libyans went to the polls to elect 200 members of parliament.
It can be difficult to be optimistic about Libya's political future given its recent history. The country endured a decades-long dictatorship under Muammar Gaddafi — who was deposed and killed in 2011 — only to have its emerging political structure rattled by abductions, assassinations and deadly infighting.
But the country's High National Election Commission is hopeful. It worked with US-based social impact firm Reboot, which helped develop a mobile and online platform for Libyans to register for elections.
GlobalPost talked to Panthea Lee, co-founder and principal at Reboot, about how her team and other partners are working to ensure that Libyan voters at home and abroad have a voice in their country's democratic transition.
What was Reboot's role in Libya's voter registration process?
We're a social impact firm that works on development and governance projects around the world, and a lot of our work is helping populations that are often marginalized in the political process and in the development process express their views and bring their voices into policy conversations.
We had experience working with a lot of governments and civil society actors in sometimes sensitive and challenging post-conflict settings, and so we were brought in to guide the design and development process using user-centric design approach.
So the platform, we pulled together the team and built it entirely using open-source software tools — so that was essentially our role, and we supported the implementation of it.
So how does the platform work? 
The system both enables in-country and out-of-country voter registration by SMS as well as online through a suite of 11 custom-built applications. The system enables Libyans to register to vote via SMS and out-of-country voters to register via the web.
And then it also allows [Election] Commission staff to manage registration and report on field activity.
And how many people have registered for the elections using this system?
The total number of registered voters is 1,509,317, and that includes Libyan citizens across 13 countries.
What were the main challenges that you and your team encountered in creating and implementing the platform?
I think that working in a challenging context certainly isn't new to Reboot. We've worked on projects in the Niger Delta, post-revolution Tunisia, the tribal regions of Pakistan. Libya, in the current period, was arguably one of the most challenging.
The period we were there coincided with one the country's most violent periods since its revolution; a period marked by frequent political assassinations, regular kidnappings and ongoing clashes between militias and security forces.
Beyond the very real security concerns — and obviously we tried to keep a low profile and a small footprint — in the country, the operational challenges of managing a complex, national-scale technology project on site with unreliable electricity and unreliable Internet connectivity was certainly challenging.
What would you say is the role of mobile technology in shaping the democratic process?
In a lot of North African countries, there's been this narrative around mobile technologies fueling or enabling protests, enabling revolutions and transitions to these newly democratic states.
I think a lot of that is true but I think that mobile's also got a huge potential in supporting the democratic process and supporting the nation-building process. Ultimately, technology is just that. It's a tool.
Technology is able to amplify human intent. It doesn't do anything on its own. As we're seeing in this period, where countries are wrestling with how to enable a peaceful transition, enable inclusivity in political dialogue, we think there's huge potential for mobiles to enable that.
People use mobiles to protest against un-inclusive processes, and I think we're seeing a reverse trend.
We think that in a state like Libya where mobile penetration is above 100 percent, there is huge potential for it to enable inclusivity in the political process.