No, I haven't gone all political on you. I just wanted to point you at a case study by David Carr over on CIOZone.com about the IT backend of newly almost-certainly-the-Democratic-presidential-nominee (the way this thing has gone, I don't think he should count on anything until September or so... it's not inconceivable the whole thing will end up in court somehow, as just about every significant election does anymore) Barack Obama.

I have some interest in this sort of study for a number of reasons. One, I like hearing about IT being used in unconventional applications, whether it be forest-Fire fighting or political campaigns... anywhere you don't normally think about IT being a factor. Two, you don't see many nuts and bolts studies of what makes these things tick; if anyone thinks to write them at all, they are usually dissuaded by a pervasive environment of security that encourages keeping tactics and techniques out of the limelight. Three, I spent several years in the mid-nineties consulting on IT for political campaigns, when the idea was still new and old-school campaign managers were clamoring for more yard signs and mailings rather than a website. It's interesting to see where the field has gone since I have been out of it.

Back in the day, the extent of our online social networking was using e-mail to exchange mailing lists, and arguing one on one with debaters on Usenet newsgroups. These days, it's become trendy for the "outsider" candidate to embrace social networking on their websites and drive fundraising through the web. Howard Dean seems to have been the first to successfully use these technologies, although his candidacy turned out to be more light than heat. But what about Obama?

Much has been made of the Obama campaign's popularity among small-donors, which is taken to signify popular support. It may be, however, that it's simply a signifier of the campaign's ability to drive small donors to an appropriate venue for their donations. Until e-commerce processing became viable for campaigns, it was simply more efficient to focus on large donors; every transaction had to be processed by hand, and documented sufficiently to satisfy FEC reporting requirements. IT has been a huge boon to campaigns in opening up the doors to larger numbers of smaller donors, who previously (and still, even for campaigns which have not driven them to online donation sites; the Clinton campaign is notable in this regard, for as Carr points out, they were able to increase their small-donor numbers significantly, but not until they made a concerted effort to push people to their site) may have been willing to donate, but who were impractical to collect from.

There is no question that the Obama camp was early to grasp the potential and exploit it, with the help of Facebook co-found Chris Hughes. Using largely off the shelf technology and volunteer support, the campaign quickly put together an effective online platform and social networking site which helped drive both donations and get out the vote (GOTV) efforts.

This, however, also may be where the story becomes same old/same old from the IT perspective.

I developed a rule when working on campaigns, after several negative experiences, to not rely on volunteer labor for anything requiring special or technical expertise. I found in most instances, you get what you pay for, and anything complex which was subject to a volunteer's personal preference or for which the details might remain largely in their mind (which could change at any time) was not going to be reliable. Modern campaigns get around this by handling the complex back-end work through paid consultants or off-the-shelf software packages, making the volunteer labor available for coordinating, conducting business, and actually making use of the package.

However, many campaign consultants are not too far removed from volunteer status themselves (particularly partisan consulting groups) and it seems that Obama's backend has suffered from this. Scaling and integration issues have plagued the system in recent months, and promise to become an even larger problem moving into the general election. Fortunately, the general is when the money really starts rolling, but whether or not the campaign will prioritize IT spending remains to be seen. Moreover, while the attraction of building IT for campaigns is that you usually get to start fresh, that also means that few campaigns have the expertise at switching technology horses in mid-stream, as may be necessary. Technology problems are not always surmountable in well-defined timeframes at any rate.

I worked with a campaign finance consultant who told me once, "In a campaign, you can always get more volunteers. You can always get more money. You can always get more of whatever you need... except time. The polls close at seven on Tuesday and that's it."

That factor was always one of the appeals of campaign work for me; it's a race with a well-defined finish line and indisputable metrics. For anyone used to conventional technology projects, which can become drawn-out and muddled, it's an exhilarating experience with no-holds-barred feedback: you either won or you lost. But for the Obama campaign, the November deadline could prove more impediment than exhilarating opportunity.