The Future of Technology at the DNC: A Path Forward?
With this weekend’s election for DNC officer roles, I felt the timing was right to share a few thoughts I’ve had about direction of the technology program at the party. Spinning up a new and innovative technology program is going to require building upon past successes while also fixing some areas where we’ve had trouble in the past and making sure not to rest upon said past successes.
We must not abandon what has worked but also learn from what didn’t, create a digital risk management structure that contributes to a wider herd immunity across the movement, lead on staff diversity to ensure all voices are represented, find productive ways to work with Silicon Valley, and create the next generation of internal DNC-developed products while not reinventing the wheel.
The DNC has quietly had excellent technology leadership over the last few years, while working with limited resources, big expectations, and a hyper competitive staff market. I hope that whomever is the new chair is, they will recognize the deep value and strength of what exists at the DNC and makes a significant investment to grow the program to ensure we can win races up and down the ballot in all 50 states over the next 4 years and beyond.
Building Upon Past Technology Successes and Learning from Failures
Because of the election results, there has been a growing backlash to data and analytics inside of Democratic campaigns. The easy scapegoating of a proven methodology is being done both by those with an interest in reviving older approaches, as well as by the passionate who are simply seeking answers and want to make sure past mistakes are not repeated.
It is vital that we learn from our mistakes, but it is absolutely imperative that we do not overreact and sacrifice the substantial advantages our data and analytics programs have brought us.
The Voter File Co-Op and VoteBuilder contracts have helped to standardize organizing technology across the entire progressive space, and ensure a common language around data within the movement as a whole. This has created an environment where staff trained in one part of the movement can easily plug into the tools and techniques of another. Prior to these contracts being in place, there was a federated infrastructure that differed state to state, and in some cases even more granularly. It is vital that the DNC continue to support these advancements and work closely with the state parties and vendors such as NGPVAN to ensure the products deployed remain accessible, easy to use, and cutting edge.
However, this does not mean that we should rest upon these successes. We must do postmortem work on the 2016 cycle to determine what worked and what did not. This includes identifying pieces of infrastructure that were overtaxed, under resourced, or simply need to be re-architected because of age. One of the first jobs of the new CTO should be to reach out to the state party data management staff and state party leadership, data and analytics staff from the Clinton and Sanders campaign, and the vendor community. That way we can develop a concrete roadmap to address infrastructure concerns, and can move resources accordingly.
Creating a Digital Risk Management Team that Serves the Entire Democratic Committee Structure
Similarly sized corporate entities make significant investment in digital risk management to mitigate losses in the event of hack, theft, and breach. With the voter file, analytics files, video archives, staff records, research data, as well as the communications stored in email, the DNC has significant assets that are perpetually at risk, as was so painfully demonstrated this year. The DNC should create a team within the technology department whose sole focus is digital risk management. This would include testing all DNC systems for vulnerabilities, training staff across the committees on best practices, and addressing issues as they occur.
This area is of particular personal interest to me, as I am currently working on building out a nonprofit that would focus on these issues for the wider progressive movement. Building a strong culture around technology security is going to require work from the entire progressive community, not just one entity.
It is also really important to note that some of the most devastating attacks stemmed from relatively simple spearphishing against personal accounts, not institutional. This makes education just as important as technological solutions.
The DNC can serve as a central convening point where legally permissible for other Democratic entities, but should make sure that it publishes its approach and is part of the wider community; this is the only way we can ensure herd immunity. There is no question that the DNC and its employees and leaders will remain a target for hackers, especially after the “success” of the Russian hacks. It is imperative that the DNC retain top level talent to help secure against these issues as best as possible. There should not be an expectation that every attack can be stopped, especially when coming from a dedicated state actor, but damage can be mitigated with a smart security strategy.
Not Just Committing to, but Leading on Technology Staff Diversity
The DNC is at a fundamental disadvantage for technology staff recruitment, due to the limitations of salaries and growth available because of financial and fundraising limitations. Yet, talented people still seek to work at the DNC due to the mission, provided there is an environment that is both welcoming and has a path for advancement. Over the years, the DNC has made many efforts to make sure their staff is more reflective of the coalition, but just doing a bit better than before is not enough. The DNC technology operation should be a leader in creating opportunity for technologists of all backgrounds and types, and ensure the team that supports this infrastructure is reflective of those they are supporting.
The DNC should make sure that its hiring, especially in technology, does not reflect the homogeny of Silicon Valley. The DNC has already made strides in this area, but should position itself at the forefront; a heterogeneous tech staff will better serve the heterogeneous coalition the DNC serves. Fortunately, there has already been successes in the Obama administration itself that can be used as an example; the teams at 18F and USDS have made significant efforts to reflect the population as a whole. With some folks exiting the government with the departure of the Obama administration, significant efforts can be made to recruit talent that still wishes to have impact with their work.
It is also vital that the DNC be willing to pay as competitive wages as possible for technology talent, and make sure expectations and hours are friendly to experienced staff who are mid-career and late-career with families, not just smart inexperienced folks who will work long hours for low wages. Too often, staff does short tours at the DNC and then moves on to other places to recover financially leading to a constant churn and loss of institutional knowledge. While it is vitally important that there is fresh talent in the building, it is also important to make sure that we don’t lose key staff due to turnover resulting in constantly readdressing the same problems.
The technology team should also lead in creating an open door for folks of all backgrounds by ensuring all internships are paid. Unpaid technology internships are too often only accessible to those whose background include families that can afford to support them while working for free, which contributes to the problem of the technology staff not being reflective of the constituencies they serve.
Figure Out Productive Ways to Work Closely with the Valley
There continues to be significant interest from major and minor technology companies, as well as from the venture capital community, in getting more involved in the political space. Some companies have chosen to work within the existing structure and with existing talent (Google and Microsoft) while others have attempted to “disrupt” the space ignoring the professionals and companies already there (Andressen Horowitz and Nationbuilder). The DNC should work to find productive ways to leverage the talents of those who wish to work within the space, channeling interested parties into programs such as the Technology Fellowship program proposed by Josh Hendler and Bryan Whitaker.
The DNC should also ensure that it works to foster growth inside the progressive software community, embracing companies like ActBlue, NGPVAN, Blue State Digital, Action Network, Civis Analytics, Bluelabs, Clarity Campaign Labs, Pantheon Analytics, Targetsmart, Hustle, and others who choose to identify with the movement. These homegrown talents are often staffed by former campaigners and former DNCers, and have become a vibrant ecosystem of innovation. There will be pressure from the wider tech industry to gain access to this ecosystem, especially after the results of the past cycle. The DNC must make sure that mission alignment is a consideration as it chooses partners with whom to do business, as it should not be in the business of funding innovation for those who would seek to defeat us.
Create New Innovative Products for Use by all Democrats
The DNC has the infrastructure and resources to serve as the center for a wide-scale data integration across the different committees and campaigns. By leveraging existing systems, the DNC can work with vendors and its own internal development resources to build a system to aggregate many different types of data into a unique view of supporters and the public as a whole. Leveraging high quality commercial data from partners like Targetsmart, publicly available datasets including data from the Census Bureau and the FEC, and the DNC’s extremely valuable internal data, a new composite data product could be made available to all Democratic campaigns, not just leveraged by those with internal analytics teams.
Bringing these disparate data sets together into a common infrastructure would allow for easier access to approved and trusted vendors to easily integrate with the different aspects of progressive infrastructure. By building easy to use, secure, and powerful APIs, the DNC could create the space for external progressive technologists to build strong products on top of the DNC architecture wherever legally permissible.
The DNC should also work to make sure it’s easier for all campaigns at all levels to access these resources, and be aware of the menu of options available to them. Though not quite directly analogous, an “app marketplace” approach where campaigns can see the specifics of offerings from all the progressive technology vendors should be developed and made available to folks interested for running for office. It is vital that DNC Tech not just serve the largest campaigns, but also the smallest.
New product development should also make sure to avoid the trap of reinventing the wheel. The DNC has each cycle rebuilt several tech assets including voter registration systems, voter protection databases, and other similar products. When the market has good solutions (such as TurboVote for voter reg), the DNC should embrace those solutions if cost effective to allow for widespread adoption. When there is not a solution in the marketplace, the DNC should invest in a complete product build that lives on past Election Day and is maintained by future teams.
Mike Sager is an experienced political technologist who has led technology teams at Burson-Marsteller, NGP VAN, the AFL-CIO, and PICO National Network. Mike also served as the VoteBuilder administrator for the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 cycle. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, daughter, and two smelly dogs.
