Open Standards for Online Advocacy Tools
from: Personal Democracy Forum (weblog)By Ben Schaffer, 12/12/2006 - 3:58pm
[Eds. note: Over the past decade a major industry has arisen to provide technology solutions to political campaigns and advocacy groups. These vendors, or what we call "software-as-a-service providers," offer a wide range of services, from email blasts to content management systems (CMSs) to online fundraising. They include Aristotle International, Blue State Digital, Campaign Advantage, Capitol Advantage, CivicSpace Labs, Complete Campaigns, Convio, Democracy in Action, DCS Congressional, Electionmall Technologies, GetActive, Kintera, Media Mezcla, NGP Software, and Plus Three. In this article, Ben Schaffer argues that this industry needs to take a new approach to data standards and portability. We will soon be launching a new PDF section featuring reviews of these vendors--stay tuned.]
Attending the recent RootsCamp summit in Washington was a great opportunity to learn how progressive activists and organizers accomplished their goals in the 2006 election cycle. Certainly, technology played a significant role, and today's online tools are much more mature and widely implemented than what we had to work with in 2004.
But the implicit question in this analysis of the past is, "What should we do next?"
This is especially important because interoperability is more advanced with software in general than it is with software used by activist organizations, political campaigns, and non-profits. You'd be surprised if two word processors, two drawing programs, or two email programs couldn't share common formats, and yet applications for advocacy organizations are largely without this key feature.
Instead, applications used every day to run campaigns and organizations each exist on their own islands. An organization might accept contributions by two or three separate methods, and have no way to combine them all into a quarterly report. A campaign might have an email mailing list, a list of contributors, a list of volunteers, and a list of voters in their community, but no way to cross-reference them for an overall picture of their supporters.
In order for applications for online advocacy to work together, we must overcome two separate but related obstacles: the lack of open and commonly accepted standards for storing the types of data used by advocacy organizations, and the lack of mechanisms for moving data between different tools in real time.
... However, vendors are beginning a conversation -- which will necessarily include consumers of their software -- for the first time. As a vendor, I believe this represents an important stage in the maturation of our industry.Ben Schaffer (bschaffer@mediamezcla.com) is the president of Media Mezcla LLC, the developer of Campaign Engine for progressive political campaigns and not-for-profit organizations.
technorati tags:campaigns, elections, advocacy, web2, politics, fundraising, consultants
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