George K. Fahnbulleh

Liberia’s concession agreement with Liberia Traffic Management Incorporated (LTMI) was heralded as a step toward modernizing public sector services, including vehicle registration, driver’s licensing, and traffic enforcement. But a close examination reveals that, as currently drafted, this contract opens the nation and its citizens to profound risks—primarily because it lacks critical protections regarding data ownership, oversight, and technological sustainability.

All data generated under this agreement, especially personal, biometric, and geographic data, must remain the exclusive property of the Government of Liberia. No data may be processed, stored, or transmitted outside Liberia without explicit, written consent from a national authority.

Glaring Shortfalls in Data Ownership and Protection

At the heart of the agreement's shortcomings is effectively ceding control over sensitive national datasets—including biometric and geographic information—to a private, foreign-led vendor. Nowhere does the contract explicitly state that all data generated remains the exclusive property of the Government of Liberia. Nor does it establish ironclad requirements for local data storage or a guarantee of data repatriation.

The potential consequences are grave:

• If the contract is terminated or LTMI experiences business disruption, the fate of these citizen datasets remains undefined.
• Data could be transferred or stored outside of Liberian jurisdiction, undermining national sovereignty and placing sensitive information beyond the reach of Liberian law.
• Citizens lose agency and legal recourse regarding how their personal information is accessed, shared, or commercialized.

Oversight and Accountability: An Unacceptable Vacuum

The contract further compounds these risks by diluting the Ministry of Transport’s statutory oversight role. Operational control is granted to LTMI without any enforceable requirement for:

• Regular government audits of data use and cybersecurity practices;
• Independent, third-party security assessments and transparent reporting;
• Recourse or remediation for Liberian citizens in breach, misuse, or unauthorized data exposure.

Simply put, there are no mechanisms for the government or the public to scrutinize or hold the vendor accountable for the stewardship of citizen data.

Technological Sustainability and Vendor Lock-In

In its current form, the agreement provides no meaningful pathway for technology transfer, source code escrow, or capacity building among Liberian officials. There are:

• No requirements for training government staff to manage or operate vital systems;
• No contingency for reversion of technical assets or knowledge in the event of contract termination;
• No modern requirements for encryption, cybersecurity standards, or breach notifications.

This not only makes the government dependent on LTMI for day-to-day public digital services, but also risks creating permanent vendor lock-in with spiraling costs, limited system adaptability, and hamstrung national cybersecurity.

Concrete Risks for Liberian Citizens

• Personal, driver, and vehicle data could be accessed, misused, or sold by private or foreign actors, without citizens' knowledge or consent.
• There is no guarantee of notification or remedy if a data breach exposes individuals’ sensitive information.
• National security and civil rights are left dangerously exposed, as neither government nor citizens can properly control or monitor the usage of their own data.

The Path Forward: Essential Contract Reforms

To address these critical gaps and protect both national sovereignty and citizens’ rights, the LTMI agreement must be amended in the following ways:

1. Enshrine State Data Ownership and Residency

All data generated under this agreement, especially personal, biometric, and geographic data, must remain the exclusive property of the Government of Liberia. No data may be processed, stored, or transmitted outside Liberia without explicit, written consent from a national authority.

2. Mandate Government Oversight and Audit Rights

The Ministry of Transport (or an independent regulator) must be granted unrestricted audit rights over all data systems and processes, with mandatory annual third-party security audits—and public reporting of results.

3. Require Strong Data Protection and Breach Notification

LTMI must comply with up-to-date data protection standards, including encryption at rest and in transit, penetration testing, and breach notification within 48 hours, with full government oversight and required remediation steps.

4. Build Local Capacity and Require Technology Escrow

The agreement must mandate technology transfer—including personnel training, source code escrow, and full access to technical documentation—so all systems and data can be transitioned to direct government control within three years.

5. Guarantee Contractual Termination and Data Repatriation

Upon contract expiration or early termination, LTMI must ensure secure, uncompromised handover of all data, credentials, and technical assets to the government—at no additional cost and with full documentation.

Conclusion:
Liberia’s future as a digital nation depends on upholding the rights and privacy of its citizens. Without immediate reforms to the LTMI concession agreement—ensuring state data ownership, transparent oversight, and technological sovereignty—the country risks trading short-term modernization for long-term vulnerability. The government and its partners must act decisively to secure Liberia’s digital future for this generation and the next.

Liberia’s proposed anti-corruption bill, spearheaded by Senator Abraham Darius Dillon, seeks to extend the statute of limitations for corruption-related offenses. While proponents argue it is a necessary tool to combat graft, the bill poses significant dangers to long-standing legal principles, an individual's ability to mount a fair defense, and opens the door to potential government abuse.

This bill addresses the symptom—the expiration of the statute of limitations in corruption cases—rather than the underlying disease: an administrative and records infrastructure that makes timely justice nearly impossible.

Dangers to Legal Principles and the Right to a Defense

The bill's proposal to start the 15-year limitation period from the moment of an alleged crime's discovery, rather than its commission, strikes at the core of several legal tenets designed to ensure fairness.

• Erosion of the Right to a Fair Trial: A fundamental principle of modern justice is that an accused person must have a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. The passage of decades severely undermines this right. Evidence that could prove innocence may be lost or degraded, the memories of key witnesses fade, and some witnesses may become unavailable or pass away. Prosecuting a case under these conditions creates a profound imbalance, favoring the state's vast resources and making it nearly impossible for an individual to challenge stale accusations effectively.
• Undermining the Presumption of Innocence and Finality: Statutes of limitation provide legal finality, allowing individuals to live without the indefinite threat of prosecution for past actions. By removing this certainty, the bill places anyone who has held public office under a permanent cloud of suspicion. This state of perpetual jeopardy conflicts with the presumption of innocence, as it treats former officials as perpetually suspect, unable to ever be truly free from their past. The current law provides this finality, with a maximum five-year extension for official misconduct, ensuring a definitive end point

The proposed law's broad and open-ended nature creates significant opportunities for it to be weaponized by those in power.

• A Tool for Political "Witch-Hunting": A sitting government could use the law to target political rivals or silence dissent. The concept of "discovery" is easily manipulated; an administration could claim to have just "discovered" a decades-old allegation against an opponent at a politically opportune moment. This turns the justice system from an impartial arbiter into a potential weapon for political retribution.
• Chilling Effect on Public Service and Free Speech: The fear of future persecution could have a chilling effect on public service and free expression. Capable individuals may be deterred from entering government, fearing their decisions could be second-guessed and maliciously prosecuted years later. Likewise, former officials and critics may self-censor, fearing that speaking out against the government could trigger a retaliatory investigation into their past.
• Erosion of the Rule of Law: The rule of law depends on predictable, impartial, and non-arbitrary application. The current Liberian Criminal Procedure Law sets clear and predictable time limits for prosecution—five years for a felony and three for a misdemeanor^[1]. By creating a system where the threat of prosecution is indefinite and subject to the political whims of the day, the bill risks replacing the rule of law with "rule by law," where legal instruments enforce political will.

 This bill addresses the symptom—the expiration of the statute of limitations in corruption cases—rather than the underlying disease: an administrative and records infrastructure that makes timely justice nearly impossible. By focusing on systemic reform of its record-keeping, Liberia could empower its investigators and prosecutors to build strong, evidence-based cases that can be successfully tried within the five-year limit. This approach offers a more fundamental and less perilous path to accountability, strengthening the rule of law without sacrificing the essential legal principles of finality and protection from arbitrary state power.

Liberia’s weak records infrastructure profoundly impacts criminal prosecutions—particularly in corruption cases—by impeding timely investigations, undermining evidence quality, and making it exceptionally difficult to achieve convictions within the statutory deadlines set by Chapter 4 of Liberia's Criminal Procedure Law1. Strengthening record keeping can fundamentally reverse these effects, making it possible to prosecute and convict offenders within existing legal time limits, thus rendering bills like Sen. Dillon’s proposed statute-of-limitations extension unnecessary.

Effects of Poor Record Infrastructure on Criminal Prosecutions

• Delayed Discovery and Investigation: When agency records are incomplete, disorganized, or not digitized, potential corruption and misconduct often go undetected for years. Investigators lose precious time reconstructing timelines or chasing missing documents, compressing the already tight five-year window for felonies and shrinking the two-year (or at most seven-year) prosecutorial window for official misconduct1.
• Insufficient or Ambiguous Evidence: In the absence of clear paper trails and properly maintained documentation (such as procurement files, payment records, or meeting minutes), prosecutors must rely on testimony or circumstantial evidence, both of which are easier for defendants to contest and harder for courts to trust.
• Difficulty Meeting the Burden of Proof: Prosecutors often struggle to establish criminal intent and direct causality without reliable records—a vital hurdle in corruption cases. This increases the likelihood of cases being dismissed at pretrial or lost in court.
• Prevalence of Stalling and Technical Defenses: Defense attorneys can exploit ambiguities or missing documentation, raising doubts about the evidence and leveraging statutory limitations as a shield—essentially allowing suspects to “run out the clock.”

How Systemic Record-Keeping Reform Would Enable Successful Prosecutions

Accelerated Case Discovery

Modernized, digitized, and transparent record keeping would allow:

• Immediate or early detection of irregularities through data analytics, instead of years-late discovery.
• Active monitoring, which flags red flags in real time, providing investigators more of their five-year (or shorter) window to build and file a case.

Better Quality and Quantity of Evidence

• Comprehensive records create a clear, chronological proof of criminal conduct: who decided what, when, and why, with financial and procedural details tied tight.
• Financial records, procurement logs, asset declarations, and email correspondence can directly establish links between officials and illicit activities, helping to demonstrate intent—a crucial requirement for conviction.

Streamlined and Defensible Trials

• Prosecutors can present hard documentation, making cases more resilient to legal challenges and pretrial dismissal.
• Time-consuming efforts to reconstruct or validate old evidence become largely unnecessary. This minimizes delays that result from last-minute document hunts and increases the likelihood of cases being filed and heard within the statute of limitations.

Deterrence of Offenses and Defense Tactics

• Effective documentation makes it much harder for defendants to hide behind missing paperwork or claim ignorance.
• The ability to mount technical or procedural challenges to evidence is diminished dramatically when records are routinely maintained, dated, and verified.

Why This Obviates the Need for Sen. Dillon’s Bill

Sen. Dillon’s bill proposes extending prosecution windows up to fifteen years after the discovery of a crime, arguing that the current system lets corrupt officials escape justice due to slow investigations and hidden crimes. However, the real bottleneck is not the statute of limitations itself, but Liberia’s failure to create, maintain, and track reliable records.

If the record infrastructure is modernized, most corruption and abuse can be discovered and acted upon quickly within the five-year or two-to-seven-year windows prescribed by law. This would:

• Reduce dependence on “after-discovery” extensions, thus enhancing both the effectiveness and fairness of prosecutions.
• Limit the risk of abuse tied to perpetual suspicion and politicized prosecutions, preserving finality and the rights of the accused.

In summary: Systemically improving Liberia’s record-keeping infrastructure would transform criminal prosecutions from sluggish, uncertain gambles into fast, evidence-driven processes. This shift would enable timely justice without sacrificing due process or inviting political misuse, making it possible to uphold strict statutes of limitation and ensuring accountability is achieved under existing law rather than by extending prosecutorial periods indefinitely.

I feel as if I have been screaming into the void, but the message bears repeating: the age of Artificial Intelligence is upon us. For Liberia, this is not a distant threat but a present and monumental opportunity. If we fail to act decisively—to build the foundational digital systems required to participate—we will be left behind.

Nowhere is this opportunity more apparent than in healthcare. AI is a true force multiplier, capable of transforming health outcomes in a nation with an acute shortage of physicians and clinical specialists. We are no longer talking about abstract, expensive technology. With the open-source release of powerful tools like Google's MedGemma, which can run on a single graphics card, state-of-the-art AI is now within our reach.

The benefits are not theoretical. In diagnostics, AI can analyze medical images and data with a speed and scale no human can match, reducing diagnostic errors by up to 30% and cutting reporting times in half. It can place expert-level knowledge in the hands of non-specialist clinicians in rural and remote areas, bridging the vast gap in healthcare access. For a system strained by limited resources, an AI assistant that boosts a radiologist's productivity by 50% is not just an efficiency gain; it is a lifeline.

So why the inertia? Why is this self-evident revolution passing us by?

 every government agency has made a conscious decision to hoard and conceal its data. I make this claim with 100% certainty. We see the stark consequences everywhere. A recent Executive Order instructing the National Identification Registry to simply meet its 2011 mandate laid bare such profound failures that it prompted the President to establish a 10-agency committee just to figure out what went wrong.

The answer lies in a cripplingly fragmented approach to technology. To suggest this is a failure of "my approach" is to miss the point entirely. The problem is not the messenger; it is the absence of a coherent, centralized strategy. Implementing technology is like constructing a building—it demands a solid foundation. In Liberia, we have none.

Instead, every government agency has made a conscious decision to hoard and conceal its data. I make this claim with 100% certainty. We see the stark consequences everywhere. A recent Executive Order instructing the National Identification Registry to simply meet its 2011 mandate laid bare such profound failures that it prompted the President to establish a 10-agency committee just to figure out what went wrong.

Consider this: in 2025, Liberia still has not standardized on an electronic medical record system. We have no centralized data storage or management strategy.

We have one company for our national ID cards, another for our driver's licenses, and another for voter registration. These are not separate; they are all parts of a person's foundational identity. By treating them as isolated projects, we create data silos—islands of information that can't talk to each other.

This is not a failure of advocacy. It is a failure of governance. The fact that these foundational projects are not moving forward with anyone proves the problem is systemic.

We do not need a different approach, but a different mindset from our leaders. We need an end to the haphazard, every-agency-for-itself mentality. The time for begging and piecemeal efforts is over. We need a decisive, top-down mandate to build the integrated digital infrastructure that will serve as the bedrock for our future.

The tools are here, and the path is clear. The only question remains whether our policymakers will find the will to act.

Why I Like Big Government

You don't know the value of big government until you have lived in a place with small government.

When you dial 911 and get a first responder at your location in 5 minutes...that is big government.

When you can safely deposit your money in a bank, KNOWING the government GUARANTEES it will not be stolen by your banker, that is big government.

When you can drive from San Diego, CA to Portland, ME and NEVER hit a patch of DIRT ROAD, no matter the weather...thats big government.

When you have an emergency broadcast system to alert you to any impending safety situation, that's big government.

When you go to the bathroom and don't have a clue what happens to the waste when you flush the toilet, that you won't encounter it running down the street, that is big government.

When your children, no matter your economic status, have an opportunity to attend any college they are accepted because of government guaranteed student loans, that is big government.

When your city or town, is devastated by a tornado or hurricane, and FEMA is there in 12 hours, that is big government.

When you need kidney dialysis, and you can get it 3 times a week, that is big government.

When you can travel safely from one part of the country to another because of a government-run air traffic control system, that is big government.

When you have a child with special needs, who is given an opportunity, thru special education programs, to become an independent citizen, that is big government.

When you can buy food at the market and have the confidence that you and your children will not die in 48 hours from some food-based pathogen...thats big government.

When you walk on a sidewalk and see the cutout for handicap accessibility, that is big government.

None of these things happen by "magic." Where I came from none of these things happen. So when you give me that BS about hating "big government" you don't have a freaking clue what I'm talking about. If you think I'm wrong, let's go live in Liberia for 6 months, then tell me what you think of "big government." Until then Shut the hell up!

I have watched for the past 3 weeks, as the Opposition Coalition, has tried in vain to challenge the NEC's conduct of the election.  The reason they are failing so miserably is they have approached this as a legal issue, with no forensic/technical basis.  We see a room full of esteemed lawyers arguing and peacocking about "the law." Each determined to show how much law he knows.  We get it already. You are experts at law.

However, these esteemed lawyers are totally ignorant of the forensics which could strengthen their case.  

The NEC made the voter rolls available to parties on a USB drive.  Those voter rolls were in PDF format. Yes, the NEC provided a list of 2 million voters on paper, for the political parties!!!

This is strike one.  Did the NEC deliberately provide the voter rolls on paper to make the voter rolls inscrutable? It is not possible to query such a list in any reasonable period of time.  Why not an Excel spreadsheet? But what you don't know, you don't know.

Be that as it may, there are technology tools, which will allow you to take a report in pdf and convert it back to a database.

A Liberian technology expert performed this task and shared his results with me.  On their face, they point to an astounding level of technical incompetence, that seems almost criminal.  It is one of those things when you see, and your professional, yes professional opinion is "no person can be this stupid."

There were more than 15,000 (fifteen thousand) duplicate voter IDs.  There were more than 100 persons age 105 - 215.  The latter is a data entry quality control issue.  The former, however, points to the incompetence mentioned above.

A fundamental concept of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) is the idea  every row (record) must have a unique identifier.  This unique identifier can only occur once in a table, hence the word "unique".  There are two ways to do this, which allows the system to enforce these constraints:
a) make the specific column the primary key
b) add a "unique constraint" to the column

That column for the voter registration database should be the VoterID number.  Again, because each voter must have a unique voter ID number, the database design must have designated the VoterID column as the "primary key" or placed a "unique constraint" on the column, if a different primary key was used. 

The fact there were 15,000 duplicate voterID's in the file, suggests neither of these fundamental architectural/design constraints were put in.  Let me be clear, if you registered for "Introduction to Databases" and dropped the class after 2 weeks, you would have learned about "primary keys."

In light of this apparently fatal technical flaw, the litigants should have then demanded:
1) the NEC freeze the database (by making a certified copy and removing that copy from the premises.)
2) a copy of the database be given to the litigants for inspection.

This would have allowed the litigants to actually query the database and note all of its design/data flaws.

Also important is whether or not the NEC built an "Audit Trail" into the database.  For high-security databases, it is necessary to record and track all changes made to the data, capture who made the change, and the date and time it was made.  For example, if someone changes the data in a middle name column from "K" to "Karmoh" that change is automatically recorded in a separate table.  This allows for secure monitoring of changes to the data.  The absence of an audit trail means the NEC has no reliable mechanism to tell which changes were made, by whom, and when.

Back to the absence of primary keys and/or unique constraint of the VoterID.  The design/architecture flaw here is so severe, it is impossible to believe there are not even more serious flaws in the database.  It is also impossible to know for certain, without an inspection of a copy of the actual database.

How, if at all, did the NEC correct the problem of 15,000 duplicate voter IDs? Is there an audit trail which shows how the correction was handled?

I can understand all of this technology mumbo-jumbo, is confusing to the lawyers and layman alike.  However, that the lawyers did not have database experts to challenge the NEC over these questions, is where I believe their case was doomed.

Sometimes you have to get out of your own way.

The government of Liberia is looking to enter into a BOOT model contract for e-visas, with less than 4 months left until a new government comes in. I examine the technical requirements, by the government, which are farcical, later in this piece. But first, some housekeeping.

What is the BOOT model?

"BOOT (build, own, operate, transfer) is a public-private partnership (PPP) project model in which a private organization conducts a large development project under contract to a public-sector partner, such as a government agency. A BOOT project is often seen as a way to develop a large public infrastructure project with private funding…Such contracts are typically long-term and may extend to 40 or more years."

The BOOT model is entirely unnecessary and does not apply to this type of contract (which would cost under $2M USD). There is no need for any party to BUILD the technology infrastructure (storage, database, transport, ecommerce) can all be purchased using the “SAAS” or Software As A Service model. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services are two vendors offer these types of infrastructure services.

The issue here is the services being requested, cannot, in any way, be considered “a large public infrastructure project.” The requirements in the Request for Proposal, are vague, specious, devoid of any over-arching technology philosophy. Reading the RFP, it is obvious it was SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN by a specific “vendor” with a “specific vendor” in mind.

This contract will essentially ensure, for the next 10, 20, 30 years that some group, family, cartel will get a percentage of each and every Liberian visa issued.

Imagine this: if there are 50,000 visas issued annually and the “cartel” gets $50 per visa, the “cartel” collects $2.5M annually. Extend that over a 10 – 30 year period, the amount balloons to $25M - $75M.

Why do people believe they must “soak” the Liberian people in perpetuity?

FYI, the Maritime contract with LISCR was a BOOT contract. The GoL did not spend the money to build the data infrastructure, as a result, the infrastructure is owned by LISCR and the price for turning over that infrastructure is so exorbitant, it is unaffordable.

So the question is why would the Unity Party government be in such haste, to commit to a long term contract, for a project that will not be implemented BEFORE 2018, tying the hands of the next government? This is a question I would actually like BOTH the President, and the Vice President to answer.

Sadly this is not the only such “contract” being entered into.

The National Identification Registry is embarking on a $6M USD, biometric ID card project in October (the election month). Their plans call for them to build two (2) datacenters, even though there is an unutilized data center at LIBTELCO. According to the NIR, they will register 50 persons a day. At this rate, it will take 252 years, to provide IDs to 4.7 million people. They are obviously in it for the long haul. Haul being the operative word.

The NIR has contracted with a Kenyan company to provide the service. The software and technology is not developed by the Kenyan company. They are simply the vendor who will implement the service.

Then there is the NEC, which has reportedly hired a Ghanaian company, to do/manage database work for them.

How is it that the most important, private data, data with national security and privacy implications is being given to foreign companies, as if there are no Liberians, anywhere in the world, with the capability.

Government agents standard arguments is people “have to be on the ground.” Since when did Kenya, and Ghana become “on the ground” in Liberia? Is it simply that they are planning for their lives outside Liberia? The people of Liberia will continue to suffer, while past leaders make money off them for the next 30 years.

What is obvious, in these contracts, is there seems to be a concerted effort, to direct all of the GoL information technology contracts AWAY from Liberians and Liberian companies. This hinders the development of the sector in LiberIa. How many Liberian companies are there working for the Ghanian Election Commission or the Kenyan Biometric Registry?

The VP/UP Problem
The problem for the Vice President, is he cannot run to continue the Unity Party governance, while at the same time, claim he has been oblivious to these types of shenanigans.

Analysis of the E-Visa Request for Proposal

The term service provider is actually the “integrator,” and speaks to a lack of understanding of the types of vendors that do this kind of work.

1) The Service Provider must have been in the Software Engineering business for at least 10 years.

This is a lark, because these e-visa packages are not “developed/engineered” by the service provider. The developer of the software, and the software itself should meet those standards, not the “service provider.” This is like demanding the Toyota dealership have 10 years in the car manufacturing business.

2) The Service Provider must be accredited in the key software technologies used in the development of the Web Based Online Visa Application CMM Level 5 Certification is preferred.

Again, this continues to conflate the actual developer of the software with the “service provider.”

3) The Service Provider shall demonstrate experience in the development of large and comparable software systems in the government sector. Experience working with the Liberian government will be an added advantage.

These are software packages that are purchased. If the government of Liberia were actually serious and committed to the development of the ecosystem for these types of services, it would not contract with a separate vendor for the National Identification Registry, the Biometric/e-passport, and the e-visa.

This is death by a thousand contracts, where each contract is a vehicle for some person and/or group to CHOP.

Financial Criteria:

The turnover of the company should be more than $10 million. How many Liberian IT companies “turnover” $10M. This should tell the reader, there is no intention to allow Liberian companies to qualify for such a bid.

Summary 

The government is determined to solicit multiple solutions for several requirements that can be addressed by a single integrated platform. This is yet another example of spending large amounts on a solution that can be purchased at a fraction of the cost.

What is even more painful, is the determination of this government, to develop a vibrant internal software services sector, which would further create learning opportunities for Liberian youth.

It is my hope that the next government will do an audit of ALL the technology projects, including those sponsored by aid dollars, and where there is malfeasance in contracting, it will go after, those “former officials” with malice, no matter where in the world they try to hide.

"Show me a country with poor record keeping systems, and I will show you a poor country every time" 

The fight against corruption, in Liberia, is not about integrity. It is about having RECORD SYSTEMS that can adequately track all transactions. Most African nations, Liberia included, are woefully deficient in their record keeping systems.

How come Liberians who exist in the West seem to not have these "integrity" problems? As soon as they get to Liberia, their "lack of integrity" shows up. Because in the West, record keeping systems exist that will catch them more often than not, so they do not risk committing the offenses.

The DEFAULT proposition is "you will be caught." In Africa, the DEFAULT proposition is "you will NOT be caught."

In other words, people in the West ARE FORCED to be honest, whether they want to or not, BECAUSE of the systems in place.

Another thing that forces honesty, in the West, is the REDUCED USE of CASH for financial transactions. Those credit/debit card transactions force the transactions into RECORD KEEPING SYSTEMS.

In Africa, the vast majority of the transactions are cash transactions, which leave room for theft, at every collection point of the transfer of said transaction.

As long as we continue to look at it as an "integrity" problem we will miss the mark. It is a lack of systems problem.

You can have systems of Accountability without computer systems

What process is used to standardize the collection of data for people requesting or receiving a government service/benefit?

It is not just about "computer systems."

The PAPER FORM is the most BASIC CONSTRUCT for data collection and management. In developed countries, people requesting something from the government must fill out a form. Design of those forms and their elements are controlled by a central entity and the agency requesting the benefit/action is being requested.

In the US, that federal agency is the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
-The elements and/or wording on those forms can only be altered after a rigorous process between the agency and OMB.
-Any computer systems which capture the data from those forms must be updated before a new version of the form is put into circulation.
-PUBLIC NOTICE must be given, as to the changes to the form.
-These notices and regulations are published in the Federal Register.

Once a new version of a form is released, the old version CAN no longer be used to request or submit information to the government.

So I am not speaking only about computers in any discussion of DATA SYSTEMS. Data systems include all instruments used to collect data.

The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatement and Active Labor Act, makes medical care A RIGHT, as it mandates

"hospital Emergency Departments that accept payments from Medicare to provide an appropriate medical screening examination (MSE) to individuals seeking treatment for a medical condition, regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. Participating hospitals may not transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment except with the informed consent or stabilization of the patient or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment."

What does this actually mean? "There are no reimbursement provisions" means the hospitals and/or doctors bear the COST of treatment of an uninsured person requiring emergency care. How do you remedy this?

At the core of ObamaCare is something called the "individual mandate." The Individual Mandate requires every person to purchase health insurance. As with auto insurance, a portion of the coverage is for taking care of the owner of the vehicle; a portion also serves to INDEMNIFY the owner against the financial harm he/she would cause to others. In plain English, it ensures the damage you cause to someone else is covered.

The individual mandate is also at the core of Republican objections to ObamaCare: they claim the government should not "force" people to purchase health insurance. However, the individual mandate is not some socialist construct, dreamed up by a socialist Kenyan.

"The concept of the individual health insurance mandate is considered to have originated in 1989 at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In 1993, Republicans twice introduced health care bills that contained an individual health insurance mandate. Advocates for those bills included prominent Republicans who today oppose the mandate including Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Robert Bennett (R-UT), and Christopher Bond (R-MO). In 2007, Democrats and Republicans introduced a bi-partisan bill containing the mandate. " ~ The History of the Individual Health Insurance Mandate 1988-2010

The second accomplishment of the individual mandate, is about how insurance functions. Insurance functions by the pooling of premiums to cover the actuarial risks. This means we all pay our premiums to cover the small percentage of us who would have catastrophic losses. While those risks can be mitigated, in the case of drivers, by regulations such has control of driver's licenses, it is not the same for healthcare. The older people get, the more likely they will have one or more catastrophic health and thus financial events.

So with the individual mandate, requiring every person to buy health insurance, THE POOL of younger, healthier people is greatly expanded, and allows for the coverage of the older persons, with greater risks of catastrophic illness.

The Fly in the Ointment

There is however, a fly in the ointment, private insurance companies.

The massive role of the insurance company in health care serves no purpose other than to transfer money from the health care providers to a group of people who provide no services, yet saddle practices with mountains of paperwork and regulations. Yet these are the very same "industry people" who consistently complain about "government regulations."

Private health insurance, is the sweetest business proposition in the history of business. They insure people just up to the actuarial age, where they are most likely to have a catastrophic health event, 65. After which the patient is turned over to "the government" Medicare.

Persons with expensive kidney failure, who have private insurance, are automatically turfed to the government Medicare system.

So this leaves us with a government run medical insurance program, which by definition, insures the sickest people.

The Remedy

The remedy of this is to lower the Medicare eligibility age, to bring healthier people into the pool.

Let me be clear, this is not "socialized medicine," it is a single payer system. The services provided to patients, insured by Medicare, are provided by physicians in private practice.

This contrasts with an actual socialized medicine program like the Veterans Administration, where the government owns and runs the entire system.

There are those who will argue that a government run system is inherently a bad system. My own experience tells me differently. My experience as a practice administrator, informs me Medicare is the most efficiently run insurance plan out there.

The administrative costs of dealing with private insurance can be as high as 14% of annual revenue. As a practice administrator, whose practice saw nearly 70% Medicare patients, and 30% private insured patients, we incurred a cost as high as 7% just to be able to submit our bills to these private insurance companies. Let me repeat, the 30% of our patients who are privately insured are in fact responsible for nearly 90% of our billing related expenses.

One study has shown the average administrative cost to practices to deal with insurance company pre-authorizations, referrals, and drug approvals is $80,000.

Related to the above, every insurance company has its own set of rules. Every insurance company has its own set of tricks to delay and/or avoid payment to a physician for as long as they can. One such trick is the "we need your Tax ID number trick." This usually occurs at least once a year, from a company that has been sending the practice checks for the past 8 months. How is it, all of a sudden, they need the Tax ID before they can send out the next check? Did all the Tax ID's in their computer system get erased by the IT intern? I doubt it. Every doctor in private practice will tell you the same story: there is no greater threat to their existence than the Health Insurance Industry.

This systematic delay of payments is based on something financial people call "float." Imagine purchasing a Visa gift card as a Christmas gift today. The card is not actually used until after New Years. This allows Visa to hold and invest your money on the short term market. Companies can forecast the average number of days it takes a person to use some/all of these types of funds. The same concept it at work here.

Reimbursement to primary care physicians has not increased at all in the past 20 years; at the same time the cost of health insurance is up 131% over the last 10 years.

To get a grasp of the shocking amount of money sucked out of the health care marketplace by insurance companies one only has to look at the retirement package provided to former United Health care CEO "Dollar" Bill McGuire, who was walked away from his health insurance company with more than $2 billion in his retirement package. This same pattern is par for the course in private health insurance companies. The median CEO pay in 2010 was $10 million dollars.

Click to see list of Compensation Leaders for Healthcare

If one places this income inequality in the context of the recent CBO report, it is easy to see the stark contrast in the health care industry when you compare the income gap between the "providers of health care services" to that of the insurance company executives, with the providers being to do more and more for their patients, while the insurance executives compensation continues to escalate.

No we don't "all need to change." I expect criminals will continue to be criminals. I expect police, whose job it is to fight crime, will do their jobs in a manner consistent with the constitution in a way that is not criminal.

What is going on with bad policing, has been going on for decades: 30+ years ago Richard Pryor satirized it when he say "it says right there in the manual "you can break a nigger."" 35 years ago Marvin Gaye, in his song "Inner City Blues (make me wanna holler)" sang about "trigger happy policing."

What HAS changed is the proliferation of video recorders, be they dash cams or cell phones, which provide additional perspective than the police "I feared for my life" narrative. Now that the misconduct is recorded and visible, the police position is "you don't know what it is to be a police officer."

Do I need to be a police officer to know that you don't shoot a fleeing Walter Scott 8 times in his back, try to plant your taser next to his body, and file false reports?

Do I need to be a police officer to know you don't fire your weapon in to a crowd and kill Rekia Boyd?

Do I need to be a police officer to know you don't arrive on a scene where there are several other police officers and SIX seconds after arriving you EMPTY your weapon into LeQuan McDonald?

Do I need to be a police officer to know you don't shoot Tamir Rice within TWO SECONDS of arriving on the scene?

Do I need to be a police officer to know, if you "fear for your life" you don't climb on the hood of the "suspects" car and fire 15 shots through the windshield killing Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams?

Do I need to be a police officer to know Officer Robocop of the Inkster police, who had been sued 4 times for excessive force, should not have been on the force, but for the consistent defense by other "good officers?"

Maybe I don't know what it is to be a police officer, but the officers in these instances definitely don't know what it is to be rational law abiding human beings!

No we don't "all need to change." I expect criminals will continue to be criminals. I expect police, whose job it is to fight crime, will do their jobs in a manner consistent with the constitution that is not criminal.

How exactly was Philando Castile supposed to change? He applied for and was granted a Conceal Carry Permit. He attended the required classes. Yes he had been ticketed 52 times in that past 8 years, with 35 of the charges dropped. Those numbers by themselves would suggest that he was either a very bad driver, or they are the result of targeted policing/ticketing. However, when coupled with the fact that 7% of the drivers in St. Anthony's are black, but that 7% receives 50% of the tickets, they tell a different tale.

So is it unreasonable to believe that this was simply another "good ole boy harassing stop of a black man" with a "wide set nose?" The officer claims he thought they were armed robbers, yet they did not execute a "felony stop?"

But what I am hearing from cops is not about their failure to follow procedure, but it is "he could have been a criminal." I call bullshit on that!

NOCAL paid nearly $4 Million USD to the Liberian Legislature over the past 18 months. The company paid $1,000,000 for the nation wide tour for the legislators to consult with their constituents.

I previously posted a check made out to Sen. Sando Johnson for $31,000.00 immediately after The Legislature passed the last oil block lease.

31000 x 102 = 3,162,000

It is my studied opinion, that NOCAL fronted the money to the legislators directly out of its coffers.

The lease signed with Liberty Petroleum, which had never ever drilled an oil well, fell through when Liberty could not flip the lease (which they tried to do 48 hours after getting it), and NOCAL was not able to collect it $25 million signature bonus. Out 4 million dollars with nothing to show, the President wants a restructuring.

Global Witness warned that Liberty Petroleum was unlikely to perform.

Global Witness: Liberia Has Burned the Furniture to Warm the House Feb 27, 2015

 A major oil contract, offshore Block 16, was recently handed to a coalition of three companies. One of these appears to lack sufficient funds to operate the oil block, and another has close links to some of Liberia’s worst tax dodgers. 

(1) On 18 December the first, and so far only, of these contracts was finalised. Block 16 was awarded to US-based Liberty Petroleum, Nigerian-based Pillar Oil, and Liberian-based New Millennium Oil and Gas, who together paid US$ 22 million in signature bonuses and other payments. 

(2) US-registered Liberty holds a 90 percent stake in the contract. Yet the company has only seven employees and a 2014 declared turnover of just US$ 3 million.

(3) In contrast, assuming that Liberty’s contract complies with the Liberian government’s new model contract (the Block 16 contract is not yet public), Liberty and its junior partners must invest US$ 53 million in the next seven years in oil exploration.

(4) Liberty is part-owned, through a series of intermediary companies and trusts, by US Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican representing Arizona’s 8th District.

(3) In contrast, assuming that Liberty’s contract complies with the Liberian government’s new model contract (the Block 16 contract is not yet public), Liberty and its junior partners must invest US$ 53 million in the next seven years in oil exploration.

(4) Liberty is part-owned, through a series of intermediary companies and trusts, by US Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican representing Arizona’s 8th District.

Just as Global Witness had previously warned, on June 16, 2015, FrontPage Africa reported:

The President confirmed that US oil company Liberty Petroleum, and Nigerian oil company A-Z failed to stump up US$25 million in cash they promised for four oil licenses that they agreed to purchase in the oil auction. These initial payments are known as "signature bonuses" in the oil industry.

The President said her son, Robert Sirleaf had reorganized NOCAL and left it strong. Now less than two years after he left, the President is saying the staff needs to be cut to 50? 

Why didn't Robert Sirleaf's reorganization cut the staff?

Unless the President is telling us the staffing increased from 50 to 300 AFTER Robert Sirleaf left it is clear their claim, his and hers, they reorganized the company is patently false!

Because the legislature has been PAID every step of the way, is the reason you do not see them clamoring for an explanation of what happened to the company.

This, my fellow Liberians, is the damage this woman has done to the country: she has completely destroyed the separation of powers and has corrupted and conscripted the legislature as her crime partner.

The Reorganization Team

President Sirleaf also disclosed that an Interim Transition Team (ITT) composed of the current Chief Operating Officer, the Vice President for Finance and the Vice President for Technical Services will hold over in the transition period, with severance pay delayed until the period is over.

I find it curious that the interim transition team includes the Chief Operating Officer & VP for Finance both executives who should have been managing the finances and operations of the organization.

The Chief Operations Officer, Althea Sherman (nee Eastman) was Robert Sirleafs best friend and classmate at CWA, Class of 1978.  She was brought in as his direct representative.  The Vice President of Finance, Karmo D. Ville was hired by Robert Sirleaf. Two of the three people being held over, are direct hires of Robert Sirleaf.

The entire thing is being stage managed by the president. Her son was Board Chair. She appoints his best friend to run the day to day operations of the company. The company fails. The president says fire everybody EXCEPT my sons friends, the same people who ran the day to day operations and the finance of the company that was poorly managed, are now going to lead the transition?

The Friends & Family plan works for AT & T, but it does not work for a country. 

I seriously fear for the future of this country.