Angry in the Great White North

A story this week emerged in which we learned that the Conservatives run a database.

OK, it's more complicated than that. The problem is that Tory MPs update a election database every time they deal with a constituent:

CIMS is used not only to track voter allegiance in a given riding - something every political party attempts - but also a host of other data gathered in the course of an MP's constituency office duties.

"Any time a constituent is engaged with the member of Parliament, they get zapped into the database," [Liberal MP Garth Turner] said in an interview. "It's unethical and it's a shocking misuse of data.

Right then. CIMS is evil. What of the Liberal Party system?

The Liberals use something called ManagElect, and have been training up since the summer:

From: Scott Blurton
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 11:28 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Les sessions de formation de ManagElect/ManagElect Training Sessions - August/août

Le Français suit l'Anglais

Subject: ManagElect Campaign Software

Your riding association can immediately begin to use ManagElect. Requests for access should be sent to helpdesk@liberal.ca. Please include the name of your riding and contact numbers in your correspondence.

What will be covered in the training sessions?

Overview

Duration: 40 minutes

Who should attend?

Candidate, Campaign Manager, Canvassing Chair, or Election Day Chair

What is covered?

A basic overview of the ManagElect package: Attendees learn how the software integrates into the core elements of a campaign strategy. This is a very basic overview focusing on ManagElect features; this is not a tutorial.

So where does ManagElect gather data? Let's go to the ManagElect marketing brochure:

Election Readiness

• ManagElect was proven successful during Campaign 2000 and is once again the software of choice by the Liberal Party of Canada for the next general election
• AIT offers a seamless transition from your Constituency Management database to your election database
• AIT understands the importance of preparing for the next election as early as possible

Wait, what was that? Transitioning information from the constituency database to the election database?

Certainly that can't be what it sounds like? That would be shocking!

Perhaps AIT Corp can clarify the distinction between constituency work and electioneering data:

AIT has developed and implemented the ElectSYS Product Suite, a multiple module software application, for the Liberal Party of Canada at both federal and provincial levels nation-wide. This software enables both candidates and elected officials in their respective roles to properly and easily manage their campaign and constituency offices. Currently, Liberal members of the House of Commons are using this application for their day-to-day business. Since 1997, the ElectSYS Product Suite has been the software of choice for every election and by-election at both federal and provincial levels.

So the same software manages the campaign work and constituency work. The same software is used by Liberals for day-to-day business and for elections.

Day-to-day business? Like whenever a constituent is engaged with a member of parliament, I suppose. That sort tof thing happens on a daily basis.

And ManagElect provides the ability to transition information gathered day by day as these Liberals toil as members of parliament representing their ridings over to the election side of the application.

The functionality grew over time:

This project is now the ManagElect module of the ElectSYS product suite. This tool was designed to handle tracking of the electorate and voters' intentions during a campaign. Soon after its debut ManagElect was selected as a pilot project on a few campaigns, the results were overwhelming. Since then ManagElect has become the software of choice for election management in Canada.

It was not long before our clientele started to ask for a contact management solution similar to our campaign management tool ManagElect.

This gave way to the creation of another module called AdminElect to join the ElectSYS product suite. This tool was designed to use the same database as the campaign tool. Users have now the ability to share and gather valuable information that can be used during their mandate and when comes election time.

Do the Liberals use this feature? The Liberal Party seems to be the only client for AIT's constituency+election software suite. I expect then that any features in the software are there because the Liberal Party requested them. And the website explicitly says that the "clientele" asked for ManagElect to grow into a system that gathered information "during their mandate" and provided the "ability to share" this data "when comes election time".

It sure sounds like that the Liberals not only use constituency information for electioneering purposes, they defined that functionality.

Update: Some more pertinent information.

First, AIT Corp is a partnership with the Liberal Party. Indeed, the Liberals created the software, then transfered it over to AIT Corp:

This view reflects the experience by the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC), which has developed, sold, and supported (through a partnership with a private sector company) a suite of software called ElecSys. The first product (AdminElect) assists members of Parliament to manage their constituency cases. The second product (ManagElect) is used by LPC candidates during election campaigns to track voter identifitcation and GOTV (get out the vote) activities.

And more on the relationship between AdminElect and ManagElect.

First, the role of AdminElect:

Customer relationship management software for use by politicians while in office to maintain, manage and analyze information gathered prior to and during a term of office for the purpose of preparing for a political campaign, and for constituency contact management. Used in CANADA since at least as early as April 1998

Used to prepare for a political campaign?

And ManagElect:

Software for use by political candidates to manage and analyze information gathered during a political campaign, in order to predict voting intent. Used in CANADA since at least as early as June 1997

Note that ManagElect came first. In its first incarnation, it used date collected during the election campaign because AdminElect didn't exist. And as AIT mentions on the site, the question of when data was collected changed with the advent of AdminElect:

This gave way to the creation of another module called AdminElect to join the ElectSYS product suite. This tool was designed to use the same database as the campaign tool. Users have now the ability to share and gather valuable information that can be used during their mandate and when comes election time.

Same database

Gather valuable information

Share valuable information

Information used during their mandate and when comes election time

information gathered prior to and during a term of office for the purpose of preparing for a political campaign

Everything I can find suggests that ElecSys is a single database with two interfacing programs. AdminElect is open and is used outside of the election period to help with constituency matters. Data collected during the regular MP activities is stored in the database via the AdmnSelect interface. The election writ is dropped, and with much fanfare, ManagElect is unlocked. But the information that drives ManagElect has been updated in the time between election periods via the AdminElect tool.

This is not an accident. It is a consequence of a deliberate design decision made by the people who made the program, the Liberal Party of Canada.

Or at least that's what all these bits and pieces I'm finding seem to be suggesting.

But then Garth Turner has helpfully explained to us that there is no crossover between the two tools. I'm not sure how that is possible. The same database drives both applications. Perhaps there are two different installations, with indentical but separate databases. We don't know enough about the ElecSys tool to know if this is possible. Also the marketing information confuses the issue, clearly suggesting that the data is designed to be shared. If the Liberals do have separate installation, let's hope AIT Corp charges a discounted price for each separate installation. In the past, the money spent on ElecSys has not been money well spent:

Despite the investment made by the LPC in this software suite and the fact that it could asist MPs in managing their constituencies more effectively, it is used by less than 9 percent of the caucus. For the Liberal Party of Canada, this is clearly a disappointing return on investment.

This was published in 2004.

One more thing. If constituency data collected by AdminElect is not supposed to cross over to drive elections, why is it called AdminElect?