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Civic Identity Platform

Systems Architect & Backend Lead
2022 — 2023

A verified digital identity system for County Governments to streamline service delivery, reduce "ghost worker" payroll fraud, and create a single source of truth for citizen data.

The Challenge

County governments often rely on disjointed silos of data—payroll systems, hospital records, and land registries don't talk to each other. This leads to massive inefficiencies and fraud. Simple questions like "How many employees do we actually have?" became complex, month-long audits.

Architecture

I architected a service-oriented system centered around privacy and auditability.

  • Biometric De-duplication: Integrated fingerprint scanners with an OpenCV/Python backend to identify duplicate records across payrolls.
  • Immutable Audit Logs: Every read/write to a citizen's record is cryptographically signed and logged.
  • Offline-First Enrollment: A mobile app for field agents to enroll citizens in remote areas with poor connectivity, syncing later.

Impact

The pilot program identified over 15% duplicate entries in the payroll system of a single county, potentially saving millions in annual revenue. The system demonstrated that "GovTech" doesn't have to be slow, ugly, or broken—it can be modern, fast, and respectful of the user.

Tech Stack

PythonFastAPIOpenCVPostgreSQLDockerKubernetes

Links

Connect

Friday Chai in Nairobi

I dedicate Friday afternoons to deep dives, and small talk. If you're in town, let's geek out over distributed systems, civic tech, or why you love homesteading... or just show me what you're building.

chai@emmanuelallan.com to grab a slot.

→ Usually at Røst or Klaus

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For everything else: hello@emmanuelallan.com