NOSi’s Reform of Cape Verdean Elections: Navigating Legal Challenges in Digital Governance Innovation

MIT GOV/LAB
19 min readMay 14, 2024

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NOSi staff facilitating the 2021 legislative elections. Source: NOSi.

Author: Lakshmi Gangamreddypalli, Master of City Planning ‘23, MIT DUSP.
Editing: Will Sullivan, Independent Editor.

Dive deeper into the case here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

How did NOSi, Cape Verde’s most prominent ICT institution, digitally transform the nation’s elections? What does its experience in electoral reforms reveal about navigating legal challenges in digital governance innovation in the Global South? Cape Verde, a country known for its stable democratic governance, relies on NOSi to oversee the digital aspects of its elections. During execution, NOSi often encounters legal barriers and has to negotiate the gap between rapid digital innovation and the lagging legal support for such innovation. Given how commonplace this friction with the regulatory framework is in public-sector innovation, the organization’s navigation of this friction to effectively implement various reforms prompts closer investigation. NOSi’s election administration work offers the opportunity to explore a range of legal challenges associated with transforming a core element of democratic governance. The following case study focuses on the digitization of the voter registration, voting, and counting processes to provide insights into the intricacies of implementing digital governance innovations in a challenging legal landscape. By considering the factors shaping NOSi’s ability to navigate legal issues, the study reflects on the organization’s evolving role in the nation’s elections and the future of digital governance innovation in Cape Verde.

LEARNING CASE

ICT in Cape Verde

Cape Verde has been using information and communications technology (ICT) in its electoral processes since the early 2000s. During these years, a Portuguese consultancy hired by the government administered the elections, including the implementation of a digital voter database. Questions surrounding the reliability of information on the electoral roll gave rise to civil unrest that threatened the credibility of the election results. Hélio Varela (2023), previously the technical coordinator for NOSi from 1998 to 2016 and currently the chief technical and information officer of a private telecommunications operator in Cape Verde, recalls that the consultants had to be escorted to the airport by armed forces due to this instability. In order to imbue trust in the elections, officials transferred the digital aspects of the election administration responsibilities to a homegrown Cape Verdean organization, Operational Nucleus for the Information Society (NOSI).

NOSi’s origins date back to 1998, when a domestic information technology (IT) sector was nonexistent. The government had thus far relied on foreign consultants for its e-governance needs. The lack of knowledge transfer, documentation, or capacity building at the local level reinforced the nation’s dependence on these consultants. These experiences were ultimately disappointing and were widely deemed expensive and unsuccessful. NOSi was established to overcome this predicament and build local capacity.

After its inception, NOSi grew rapidly to adopt a leading role in the government’s digital transformation — incorporating ICT into public service delivery, training public servants in the use of new technologies, redefining services and their production processes, and reworking the interactions between the government and its citizens. Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique, and Angola sent missions to learn from the state’s e-governance experience. NOSi has built over 300 applications to date, including products for other African countries, specifically Portuguese-speaking nations. Several people interviewed for this case study brought up the national pride associated with the self-reliance engendered by NOSi.

NOSi’s proven track record as an efficient driver of change within the government allowed it to become progressively more involved in Cape Verdean elections every election cycle, with the regular introduction of ICT initiatives aimed at improving credibility and efficiency. Today, Cape Verde’s electoral system is seen as effective by both international observers and the public. The pivotal role played by NOSi in election management is widely acknowledged.

AUEOM observers from 12 countries monitoring NOSi’s work during the 2016 Cape Verdean legislative elections. Source: NOSi.

Historical Background

Cape Verde is an archipelago of 10 islands with little industrial activity, scarce human and natural resources (besides fish), and a weak private sector as a legacy of colonial and socialist rule. A long history of emigration led to a small resident population of around 490,000 (2021 census). The diaspora population is estimated to be double the domestic population. Cape Verde’s structural vulnerabilities and limitations position it as heavily dependent on the international community, which is evidenced by the scale of development aid received per capita, increased foreign direct investments because of the thriving tourism industry, and the importance of emigrant remittances to the GDP.

The country is recognized and celebrated for its good governance. Indeed, as a resource-constrained, externally dependent micro-state, Cape Verde has marketed its good governance as a resource to attract outside investors, IMF loans, and improved US security ratings. It is considered a comparatively successful case of development in the past four decades. The country’s e-governance efforts developed out of a resolve to use ICT to overcome the geography and link Cape Verdeans to the rest of the world. Today, as a way to diversify the economy, the Digital Cabo Verde Project attempts to establish Cape Verde as the digital hub of West Africa by capitalizing on its strategic location and ICT potential.

Elections in Cape Verde

Cape Verde operates as a multi-party, parliamentary democracy. The nation’s record of conducting democratic and peaceful elections since the first legislative elections in 1991 is often portrayed as an exception in the African context. This was most recently asserted by the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) in 2021. The importance of stable politics in attracting investors and foreign funding puts significant pressure for performance on the public sector. The political class’s recognition of Cape Verde’s self-interest in promoting democratic ideals explains, to a large extent, their motivation for responding to these pressures across various domains of public administration, including elections.

Citizens residing abroad can also participate in elections and are divided into three electoral districts: Africa, the Americas, and Europe along with the rest of the world. The diasporas also have their representatives in parliament. They have been granted suffrage for presidential and legislative elections since 1991, but their engagement has been low due to logistical and political reasons. Achieving a higher rate of registration and a higher turnout, among the diaspora as well as the national residents, are some of the main concerns for the Cape Verdean electoral management bodies. NOSi’s work holds great promise for increasing turnout and making elections more accessible to all citizens.

NOSi staff monitoring the 2021 legislative elections’ counting process across the national islands and the diasporas. Source: NOSi.

NOSi’s Digital Transformation of Elections

The primary stakeholders that NOSi works with for its election interventions are:

  • the National Electoral Commission (CNE),
  • the General Directorate for Support of the Electoral Process (DGAPE),
  • the Electoral Census Commissions (CREs), and
  • multiple other organizations, including the Ministry of Justice, police, and the entire civil identification ecosystem.

The first three are the country’s electoral management bodies. The CNE is the constitutionally mandated entity entrusted with broad administrative and regulatory authority for the oversight of voter registration and electoral processes, including monitoring, supervising, and auditing. In the execution of its electoral duties, the CNE receives support from DGAPE, which is responsible for the organization of elections and the planning and coordination of voter registration. Each electoral district has a CRE working on revising and rectifying the electoral roll.

The election reforms introduced by NOSi were born out of the needs identified by the CNE and DGAPE to make elections more efficient, cost-effective, and credible through digital solutions. The universe of projects NOSi has designed and implemented over the years impacts all stages of election administration, including voter registration, voting, and counting.

Registration

The group of reforms that allowed the digitization of the voter registration process began in 2001 and increased in scope in 2008 due to civil unrest over the veracity of the electoral lists, which had some reported evidence of duplicate records and registration of deceased individuals. To tackle this, NOSi built software to improve the quality of information by efficiently weeding out such records from voter lists. NOSi worked with a Belgian technology company to employ biometric technology in elections for registration, deduplication, and voter verification. Both of the above efforts depended on and augmented a centralized digital database of citizen records, which has been a longstanding project by NOSi.

The current citizen identity and civil registry database, stored in the NOSi data center, is a culmination of multiple reforms that came together in 2009 with the National System for Civil Identification and Authentication (SNIAC). It allows in-person identity verification and digital authentication and forms the basis for the issuance of identification documents like the Electronic Passport (PEC) launched in 2016, the National Identification Card (CNI) launched in 2018, and the Residence Permit for Foreigners (TRE) launched in 2021 (NOSi, 2022).

Voting

Elections in Cape Verde are conducted by manual ballot. While the electoral code (ACE, 2023) allows for pilot experiments in electronic voting in one or more electoral districts, comprehensive electronic voting reform has been awaiting resolution for 12 years.

NOSi does not have a direct role in the process of casting votes. However, its contributions help enhance the voting experience by facilitating the efficient mapping of voters to polling stations and providing reliable voting information online. It also sends timely reminders to citizens to register and vote.

Counting

Back in 1999, conclusive results of elections were available three days after voting concluded. In 2011, provisional results were accessible to the public within three hours. In the last elections, the duration was further reduced to just over an hour. This is a celebrated outcome of NOSi’s involvement in the counting process since 2008, when DGAPE sought NOSi’s assistance in digitizing this step. NOSi achieved this by making space for the release of provisional results while the official count is still underway.

The official counting process is prescribed in the electoral code (ACE, 2023. After voting closes, polling officials verify and examine the ballot papers before manually tallying the votes. The polling station board then prepares the partial result sheets, which are scrutinized by the party/candidate representatives present during the count and subsequently displayed publicly. Partial results from all the polling stations are consolidated and verified at the district level, where discrepancies and disagreements in these results are addressed before the final tally and allotment of seats. In diaspora voting, a similar preliminary counting process is undertaken by the respective consular service(s), and the partial results and other electoral material are sent to the CNE headquarters in Cape Verde, where the final results are determined.

NOSi intervenes in the above process at the stage of transmission and consolidation of the partial results. Once the polling officials at a station agree on the partial results, despite missing further steps of verification, they are immediately transferred to online, television, and mobile platforms. Officials at every station are supposed to capture the partial result sheets using optical scanners and transmit the counts by entering them into tablets. Although NOSi trains polling officers on how to use the devices before every election cycle, gaps in digital literacy pose difficulties during these steps. NOSi tackled this issue by introducing an intermediary at each station to assist with the transmission. The digitized data is used to provide real-time updates of the counting process at every level of aggregation leading up to the provisional results. Meanwhile, the original electoral material goes through the official steps, and the final results are published by the CNE within 14 days.

Process of counting and consolidating results after polls close and ballot boxes and papers are verified. Source: Lakshmi Gangamreddypalli.

Reforms under consideration

Digital reforms that are currently under deliberation include electronic voting, biometric identification of voters at polling stations, and automatic voter registration. Electronic voting has been on the agenda for over 12 years, but the lack of political consensus has led to a prolonged stalemate on the issue. The most recent version of the electoral law was adopted in 2007 and later amended in 2010.

Varela (2023), who is part of the group developing the legal infrastructure to support this next stage of the evolution of Cape Verde’s electoral system, explains that automatic voter registration would entail a complete integration of the electoral process with SNIAC. This would make the electoral census and the CREs obsolete by creating a permanent voter register that automatically updates when a citizen turns 18. The reduced barriers to election participation aim to decrease voter abstention and ease the diaspora’s registration experience.

Legal Challenges in NOSi’s Elections Work

NOSi’s elections work demonstrates a variety of challenges where the existing legal framework ranges from restrictive to ambiguous to sparse. Its navigation of these challenges in implementing the digital citizen database, provisional results, and data privacy protections sheds light on the relationship between technological and legal aspects of innovation.

Restrictions in establishing a digital citizen database

Every step in the process of implementing a digital citizen database led to the disruption of the existing civil identification ecosystem. The modernization efforts challenged existing legal frameworks and encountered significant resistance from institutions whose authority they threatened. The notaries opposed the digitization of record-keeping and the diversion of their primary duties to online platforms. Similarly, the police fought against yielding control over passport issuance.

Civil servants within the General Directorate of Records, Notary, and Identification (DGRNI) expressed concern that the legal integrity of the system would be compromised by NOSi-led technological change. They believed that digital reform should follow the creation of a strong legal structure. To accommodate the rapid pace of innovation, NOSi pushed for the reverse strategy of pursuing legal compliance at the end of the reform process. NOSi engineered the services and procedures first, sought approval from government partners, and then proceeded to work with legal consultants to develop a suitable legal framework. This “change the law” attitude exemplifies NOSi’s technology-first approach toward governance innovation.

Ambiguity around provisional results

In its 2021 assessment, the AUEOM notes that it

“acknowledges the technical and operational aptitudes of the CNE and DGAPE which contributed to the conduct of a transparent and credible vote. However, the electronic transmission of the provisional results was managed by NOSi, without the proper and clear definition of the responsibility of the CNE.”

The management being questioned is potentially in reference to two issues. Firstly, the method of transmitting the partial results to digital platforms deviates from the prescribed procedure in the electoral code. There are no explicit legal provisions for the technology used and the intermediaries assisting with this technology. Secondly, the accelerated results communicated by NOSi are provisional and are missing a crucial step of scrutiny and ratification, which occurs at the district level.

Although the provisional and official results have never differed significantly enough to change the outcome, even in close races, it is unclear how potential discrepancies would be dealt with. In case the provisional results are contested, the CNE would likely be held liable. In fact, since the CNE has the final word on how elections are conducted, it is unlikely that NOSi could have employed methods that the CNE is entirely oblivious to. Moreover, the CNE’s election audits comprise a review of NOSi’s systems, including the digitized counting process, which it developed in partnership with DGAPE. According to NOSi’s officials, the AUEOM’s remark can be attributed to tensions between the CNE and DGAPE. Notwithstanding, this disagreement surrounding provisional results highlights the insufficient legal description of the role of each body involved in election management, leading to uncertainties around the nature and level of accountability of these bodies. As a technical partner hired by DGAPE, NOSi defers the interpretation of this ambiguous legality to its government partners. Evidently, NOSi occupies a unique position where its involvement in elections has been deep enough to effect transformative changes but not deep enough to warrant explicit legal provisions.

Sparse legislation on data privacy

Questions surrounding data privacy and security that have persisted for most of NOSi’s history were reinvigorated after the launch of NOSi’s data center in 2015. The extent of centralization of the services and applications, combined with their total integration with the data infrastructure, aggravates the dangers of a potential breach. In 2020, a cyberattack targeted the nationwide private telecommunications network (RTPE), resulting in the temporary suspension of certain public services. To reduce the exposed vulnerabilities in the infrastructure, NOSi proceeded to invest heavily in cybersecurity measures.

One of the earliest outcries on data protection issues was during the 2001 election when voter registers were publicly available online. The DGRNI and the general public expressed concern over the transparency of NOSi’s data. Sparse regulatory guidelines on data privacy allowed NOSi to adopt a permissive stance on this issue until attention to the legalities arose after the introduction of online registers. Indeed, in 2001, Cape Verde made history as the first African nation to implement a comprehensive framework for protecting personal data. Legal and technological safeguards related to data privacy and security have been undergoing continuous improvements ever since this early friction.

NOSi’s at times liberal approach to legal issues is demonstrated above. Occasionally, its innovation processes have tested the limits of legal compliance and pursued possible legal rectifications after the fact. This iterative method of dealing with legal issues is more supportive of the pace of change that NOSi strives for. It also forces the legal system to stay apace.

Factors Enabling Effective Navigation of Legal Challenges

How has NOSi been able to work through the above legal challenges in order to implement its electoral reforms? What factors contributed to the successful administration of multiple election cycles despite legal complexities?

NOSi did not always succeed in overcoming legal barriers to its innovations. Frequently, depending on the scale and complexity of the challenge, it had to await necessary regulations before implementing its products or services. For instance, in the case of the Digital Mobile Key, the software was ready to launch for two years before the legislative decree clearing its use was released. In the case of electronic voting, the required electoral code updates are still pending, stalling the innovation process. However, in cases where NOSi has effectively navigated legal challenges, understanding the factors contributing to its ability to do so provides insights into the nuances of innovating in contexts with slow-to-respond legal regimes.

Political support

Given that the strongest claims for fair election administration generally come from the contesting parties, political support goes a long way in negotiating legal issues. The extent of the support enjoyed by NOSi is rooted in its very conception and early years of development.

In 1998, the State Financial Administration Reform (RAFE) unit, NOSi’s predecessor, was established as an autonomous unit under the finance ministry. It was staffed by three engineers, including Varela, from the private sector with no public sector experience. The improvement of financial information systems was carried out with the help of political support until RAFE gained trust within the government and among the bureaucrats. Its scope was gradually expanded to provide ICT services to other departments. This also circumvented the legal and technical constraints associated with hiring foreign organizations to work on sensitive government projects.

Despite the apprehension surrounding RAFE’s future when the opposition party took power after the 2000 election, the new government continued to let it operate as a special organization under the government. In fact, it was “promoted” from the finance ministry to the prime minister’s office in 2003 and was granted decision-making authority.

RAFE’s evolution to NOSi through moderate structural transformation was overseen by a committee headed by Jorge Lopes, the minister of infrastructure and transport at the time, who then became NOSi’s political coordinator and stayed as its general manager until 2016.

NOSi’s history of bipartisan political support was crucial in establishing it as a powerful driver of change. This granted significant political leverage in working out methods of legal compliance that did not compromise the pace of innovation. The joint leadership of Varela and Lopes for over 13 years not only allowed long-term planning and stability due to the embeddedness of the bureaucracy, but also seems to have reduced the perception of political biases within NOSi, since they were appointed by opposing political parties.

Organizational structure and approach to governance reform

Technological innovation before legal and structural accommodations is a typical characteristic of NOSi’s modus operandi, particularly before 2014. In some cases, its interventions challenged the existing legal mechanisms enough to lead to broad changes in legislation. This approach to governance reform is fundamentally linked to its fairly informal organizational structure and can be seen taking shape during its early days, as described above.

Unlike typical public sector IT departments, NOSi is not housed within any specific government ministry. It grew organically and was hence organized around projects, resulting in a relatively flat structure with few mid-level managers. Its unique structure and culture, dominated by people who would describe themselves as technicians rather than bureaucrats, have been compared to that of a Silicon Valley startup. Varela and Lopes, the organization’s long-standing leaders, also have backgrounds in engineering before their forays into public administration.

The decision-making power NOSi wields, combined with its outsider position as an independent public firm, earned it the status of a “super-agency” and made it an effective mediator between various government bodies.

Lopes (2023) notes that a majority of NOSi’s work is indeed communications and is dependent on the relationships it has built with government bodies over decades. Its position and structure also afford it some distance from direct responsibility to citizens and from political interference in its workings. The convergence of these circumstances allows significant flexibility in how NOSi can respond to legal issues.

Successes in election administration

NOSi’s efficient implementation of reforms that are in conflict with the regulatory environment cannot always be explained using a linear process where legal compliance is resolved prior to the launch of the innovation. At times, as in the case of data privacy and security related to voter lists, it adopted a liberal stance that was influential in quick execution. One way to understand the considerable latitude NOSi seems to have in assuming such a liberal approach is by examining the relatively low pressure for legal compliance placed on the organization.

The above-discussed factors, i.e., political support and organizational structure, explain the muted concerns around NOSi’s lapses in legal compliance to some extent. The explanation most commonly cited by interviewees for the tolerance for NOSi’s liberal attitude is the successful performance of its products and services. The organization’s record of delivering functional products together with its strong service provider culture help create client ownership of these products.

The measurable outcomes NOSi achieved in election administration translates to the trust, and hence latitude, that it enjoys in working out legal issues. Some of these outcomes include the consistent validation of the provisional results by the CNE’s official results, the prompt endorsement of provisional results by contesting political parties/candidates, reduced incidences of issues relating to registration, reduced anxiety around vote manipulation, and a suspected positive effect on voter registration and turnout because of the increased communication and accessibility of information. Legally, parties/candidates are the only ones who can dispute election results and appeal for a recount, so their trust in the process helps alleviate legal concerns.

Shifting Attitudes Towards Innovation and Legal Challenges

Over its 25-year history, NOSi has undergone radical changes in its structure and operations. Most of the election interventions and legal issues discussed so far are rooted in NOSi’s pre-2014 era. NOSi’s approach to innovation and navigating legal challenges has since shifted significantly.

Before 2014

NOSi remained a fairly informal organization for much of its history, both in terms of its structure and operations. The flexibility afforded by this informality was crucial to maintaining the fast pace of innovation. NOSi’s reforms during this period were technology-oriented, and legal concerns were addressed after the fact. The discussed examples show how the conflict between technological and legal innovation was being negotiated frequently, with advances on one side forcing the other side to catch up. This state of imbalance and generative friction stimulated progress on both sides and helped mobilize consensus for the necessary changes. This period proved most productive for NOSi’s innovations, both in terms of the speed of reform as well as the scale of reform.

Since 2014

In 2014, NOSi was transformed into a state-owned enterprise (SOE), NOSi-EPE, with 100 % of the shares owned by the state. Besides adding some formality to the organization, this allowed NOSi to restructure in a way that provided more efficiency to both its national and growing international operations. The consequent shift in NOSi’s approach towards legal challenges is apparent in the introduction of a working group on corporate compliance.

The prioritization of regulatory and procedural concerns is further mandated by the Ministry of State Modernization and Public Administration (MMEAP), which was established in 2021. NOSi is now required to defer to the ministry on matters of law and policy.

With legal matters taking precedence, technological development came to be dictated largely by legal feasibility, as in the case of traditional bureaucracies, thus leading to a much slower pace of innovation (Brito, 2023). However, the institution of more checks and balances in the innovation process suggests an attempt at balancing technological advancement with legal integrity.

Anticipating privatization

The resolution to privatize NOSi was formally made public in 2017. The World Bank and other proponents of privatization view it as a much-needed measure to displace NOSi’s monopoly in the nation’s ICT industry and make way for a private sector. It is also meant to make the organization more competitive and decrease the cost of its services. Many at NOSi believe that privatization could seriously hamper the sovereignty of the digital governance solutions, especially those critical to democracy like election administration. They contend that this measure is more likely to increase the presence of international private consultancies in the country than build a local private sector.

The government did not meet the goal of privatizing NOSi by 2020. It remains unclear whether the infrastructure will be privatized or the software. Depending on how privatization is carried out, NOSi’s ability to leverage its position to overcome legal barriers could be severely hampered.

Despite the lack of progress on the privatization front, signs of NOSi’s impending future are evident in the financial plan for the Digital Cabo Verde Project. The project will receive up to 20 million USD in funding from the World Bank to improve the nation’s digital competitiveness and the provision of digital public services. Its budgetary allocations confine NOSi to the task of capacity building. Furthermore, efforts to introduce electronic voting are sidelining NOSi from participating in the tender for electronic ballots.

Notwithstanding privatization, one way to spur innovation in the current environment is by allowing opportunities to test and pilot digital interventions as the regulatory landscape evolves. Varela (2023) suggests the application of a regulatory sandbox that supports NOSi’s rapid pace of innovation while reducing uncertainty and increasing compliance with laws. Such a broadening of the legal framework will reduce the barriers to innovation, especially for smaller and newer firms. Moreover, a sandbox environment that provides a level playing field for all participants can foster competition in Cape Verde’s ICT space by reducing NOSi’s comparative advantage in terms of the legal leeway it appears to enjoy.

Conclusion

Cape Verde’s record of smooth elections as a young democracy is a crucial aspect of the nation’s strategic advantage in negotiating international grants for its development agenda.

NOSi’s elections work goes a long way in endorsing this image of good governance. Furthermore, by building local capacity, NOSi has helped Cape Verde maintain sovereignty over its elections and citizen data.

From a consideration of the factors that have enabled NOSi to innovate despite legal challenges, it is evident that the organization’s achievements are fundamentally linked to its position within the country’s ICT ecosystem. NOSi’s evolving role has compromised this position to some extent, but it suggests the crucial balancing of the pace of technological progress with legal integrity in governance reform.

A closer look at NOSi’s approach to digital governance reform and the factors contributing to this approach offers valuable learnings for public sector agencies from similar contexts. NOSi’s navigation of the challenging regulatory environment surrounding elections raises important questions about the relationship between technological and legal aspects of innovation.

Should a legal framework for digital innovation precede technology implementation, or can it follow implementation? Is the inherent friction between technological innovation and the existing legal framework a challenge or an opportunity?

NOSi’s election reform experience contradicts conventional assumptions, first by showing how the direction of the relationship between innovation and law can be altered from sequential to iterative, and second by showing how friction can be generative.

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MIT GOV/LAB
MIT GOV/LAB

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