Political Parties

Cross-posted from NDI's DemWorks blog; written by Kate Cyr

“Data is what makes or breaks campaigns,” says Chris Doten, NDI’s senior manager for technology and innovation. “Knowing the voting population, what they like, don’t like, where you should be focusing your efforts -- that’s what drives how candidates and their staff interact with the community.”

Canvassing, an organized system of face-to-face citizen outreach, has long been used by politicians and advocacy groups to encourage constituents to vote, assess the habits and preferences of voters, and gather public opinion data. The time-honored tradition of knocking on doors remains an integral part of campaigns, though new mobile technology is starting to change the way canvassers operate on the ground.

Traditionally, field canvassers navigate constituent interviews with help from hefty question guides. The process can be difficult -- follow-up questions change based on an interviewee’s answer, and finding the right question may mean wasting time on awkward page-turning. Taking notes on constituents poses another problem, as canvassers may record things illegibly or in an incorrect shorthand.

For field organizers in advocacy and political campaigns, the logistics of sending canvassers into a community offer challenges as well. Canvassers may get lost, accidentally cover the same ground twice, slack off during a shift or falsify responses. Organizers have to devote time to creating routes, printing maps and logging canvassers’ data every day. READ MORE »

Hello, world! I’m NDItech’s new Project Manager. I’ve been with NDI for two years as an Administrative Officer focusing on technology operations support. My portfolio included tech budgeting, procurement, vendor management, and generally providing the best IT solutions to support our staff around the world. In my new capacity, I’ll have a more direct role in advising our programs and partners.

Before coming to NDI, I was a grassroots organizer for political and issue advocacy campaigns. I worked on President’s Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Ohio along with state and local campaigns in Indiana. I even managed a City Council race, and we elected the city’s youngest council member in history. Before this I was a student organizer, bringing together students from across the state to lobby Indiana’s legislature for greater investments in higher education.

All of which brings me to NDItech. I'm very excited to work on programs that leverage technology to empower citizens, hold governments accountable, and strengthen democratic processes. As a Project Manager, I’ll use agile software development methods to keep our team organized and make sure we’re delivering quality work and executing on our promises.

 

Last month, NDI trained political parties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on the use of CiviParty, NDI’s contact management DemTool, which is based on the open source contact relationship management (CRM) system, CiviCRM. READ MORE »

In the last few years, powerful, cloud-based web apps have revolutionized the way business, civic groups and governments engage with citizens. Online campaign management systems helped empower Barack Obama’s supporters to organize their communities on the way to victory; sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) systems help businesses effectively push their wares; online communication platforms connect marketers with the populace.

Human rights and democracy advocates in the developing world have been left stranded in this leap to more effective tools. There’s a new form of digital divide that’s emerged: call it the geek gap. There are a lot of sophisticated open source software systems out there, but free software is a bit like a free puppy: the problem ain't the initial price, it’s the care and feeding over years. In low-infrastructure societies, there just aren’t a lot of people with the sophisticated systems administration skills to set up a Linux server, configure Apache, set up MySQL, and install a web application like Drupal. While there are great commercial options, struggling human rights organizations often can’t write the checks to keep those services running.

NDItech has been working on technology for development for over fifteen years, and we’ve seen the same problems manifest repeatedly. Sustainability in development is hard, and when it comes to tech it’s harder. Keeping the lights on - and web sites running - years after a project ends just doesn’t happen very often.

We're attempting to cut that Gordian knot with DemTools: the Democracy Toolkit. We’re launching with a set of four web apps that solve some of the most common problems our global network of partners have experienced. DemTools development was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). READ MORE »

Our last RootsCamp ‘13 round-up identified free tools to maximize voice, and to collect and analyze social and mobile data. Each tool was quite specific in its purpose and execution. Beyond these, the attendees (vendors and activists alike) discussed a broader set of platforms (suites) that attempt to manage people and data in a way that allow for a variety of campaign and advocacy activities including petitions, member engagement, mobilization, etc.  As before, find a round-up of the best-of-breed at the conference below. Send any of your own suggestions, and we'll update the list.

Campaign Management

NGP VAN is the largest provider of political data management tools for progressives in the US. With it’s recent purchase of NationalField, which builds tools for managing field staff and volunteers, they provide an integrated platform of fundraising, organizing, new media, and social networking products.

NationBuilder is billed as “Political campaign software starting at $19/mo”, NationBuilder has developed an impressive set of online tools for campaigns including websites, voter databases, fundraising tools, and communications tools. Nationbuilder is looking to internationalize its platform. READ MORE »

In Georgia, presidential elections are set to take place this October, generating new interest in the country’s changing political landscape.  NDItech has been engaged with our local partners in using tech to systematically monitor the election there. This will be the sixth presidential election in the country since the country’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and comes at a key time in the nation’s politics.  The elections will take place one year after President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) party was defeated in the parliamentary elections by the Georgian Dream party led by Bidzina Ivanishvili, who became the new prime minister.  This defeat represented a significant blow to President Saakashvili, who led the country’s pro-Western Rose Revolution in 2003. A poll conducted by NDI provides some interesting insights into the nature of political opinions among Georgians. NDI conducts public opinion polling in numerous countries on political issues as part of our work. READ MORE »

Given my instinctive cringe whenever I hear the term "innovation" these days, the word may a wee bit overused. However, it the concept remains as important as ever - if organizations aren't trying new things, they're stagnating.

As a global organization working with partners in a lot of different country contexts, though, I sometimes have to check myself and remember that innovation lives in local contexts. NDI's supported scores of sophisticated election monitoring missions across the world using the Partial Vote Tabulation system, including most recently in Kenya. The methodology's a tried and true one - I'll write it up soon - and has been used for over a decade. From a global perspective, it ain't new.

In Tunisia, however, it's a massive step. (No, not this kind of step.)

Given their shiny new democracy and the fact they've only had one real fair election in generations, any form of election monitoring is new. Moving to one that requires thousands of citizens across the country to work in concert with an extraordinary degree of accuracy is a big deal. READ MORE »

This is a guest post from David Caragliano, NDI's Senior Program Officer on the Asia team in D.C. You can follow up with David on Twitter.

Citizen participation in Hong Kong is on the rise, but the results of the September 9 legislative council (LegCo) election and the March 25 chief executive election do not fully capture the nature of citizen participation. Voter turnout on September 9 stood at 53 percent – just two percentage points under the historical record in 2004. Public outrage at the candidacy of Chief Executive C.Y. Leung and his push to require Moral and National Education (MNE) courses in Hong Kong schools has been difficult to ignore. However, under Hong Kong’s complex electoral system, political parties have tended to be unresponsive. Civil society has driven political messaging and mobilization, increasingly through online tools.

The candidacy of C.Y. Leung in chief executive election generated frustration among Hong Kong’s voters. His victory only reaffirmed the reality that fifteen years after the Handover a small circle of elites continue to monopolize the chief executive selection process.  What if the Hong Kong people could directly elect their chief executive? READ MORE »

Every four years NDI hosts hundreds of political and civil society leaders along with diplomats from more than 100 countries to observe the US nominating process at the Democratic National Convention - which starts next Tuesday. Our guests include legislators, cabinet ministers, leaders of civic organizations and over 100 ambassadors from the diplomatic corps based in Washington. NDI puts together an entire daytime program of interesting panels and events for our international guests that complement the official evening convention speeches and activities.

This year NDI's International Leaders Forum (ILF) program has a tech4dem thread running through it that provides a unique opportunity for tech leaders to introduce key themes and issues to the global group of political leaders. We've partnered with Google to host a series of three "Democracy Spotlights" that will highlight important trends and ideas in technology and politics, and a panel discussion - called 21st Century Campaigns - that will feature digital strategists from the Obama, Romney and successful online issue-based campaigns.  READ MORE »