Socially Networking Your Data: An Obama Campaign Case Study

 

 I. Introduction

One of the most important but little-discussed reasons for Obama’s 2008 success was a relentless focus on measuring outcomes at all levels of the campaign’s infrastructure. Although careful tracking of metrics is not a new campaign concept, the traditional approach has been to collect outcome data primarily for the use of senior staffers to consult for strategic decision-making and staffer accountability. But there is room to report data more precisely, and to make this information available to more stakeholders.

 

In our technologically-enabled generation,[1] there is no excuse not to leverage online resources to ensure that campaign reporting, goals and data tracking are transparent. We live in a time when The President has a (popular) Twitter account, hundreds of millions depend on Facebook and MySpace to keep up with their friends, and people sleep with their cell phones next to their pillows. Socially networked lives are the norm – shouldn’t our campaign data be socially networked too?

 

That's how, as both a field organizer and an online organizer, I understand the premise of “shared measurable outcomes.” A concept developed by practitioner-scholar Marshall Ganz, shared measurable outcomes speak to organizers everywhere: require specific results, measure them, and constantly adjust goals based on real results. After the Obama 2008 campaign, I emphasize one more addition to this definition - Online. Creating an online system of specific, measurable results that is shared laterally with staff and volunteers spreads accountability, self-motivation, and socially networks your data.

 

Ganz rightly intertwines shared measurable outcomes into effective organizing, asserting organizing goals must be “clear, measurable and specific”. Without such objectives, Ganz argues, progress cannot be evaluated, strategy cannot be adapted, and accountability becomes virtually impossible.[2]

 

While prioritizing “measurable outcomes” may sound intuitive, or even obvious, Ganz’s community organizing approach was not standard operating procedure in modern campaigns, and socially networking these outcomes online is entirely new.

 

Transparency of measurable outcomes across a greater audience creates accountability and actionable data - sorely needed measures for many campaigns. When data is shared from volunteer to volunteer, volunteer to staff, and staff to senior management, institutional culture shifts. Outcomes become incentives for self-motivation and are socially compared, in real time. Volunteers and staff can visually assess their contribution to the campaign through charts, graphs and leader boards. Teams can track their impact together, and records from week to week and month to month are accessible and analyzed.

 

Socially networked outcomes build upon these principles, understanding that data must be transparent and understandable to have the greatest impact on progress and strategy. The most efficient way to do this is online. Here, the campaign innovated, extending Marshall Ganz’ concepts to the Internet by leveraging online social networking.

 

Reporting results online and developing the corresponding measurement tactics was not an easy task. This article is meant to tell the story of how the online system evolved, and the primary lessons derived from this evolution. By the end, it will be clear how the principles behind social networking apply directly to the concepts behind shared measurable outcomes.

 

 

In the 2008 Presidential elections, around 130 million Americans voted – 8 million more voters than in 2004.[3] Though multiple factors drove the turnout spike, of course, the Obama campaign’s network of grassroots supporters, trained neighborhood teams, millions of volunteers, staff in all 50 states in the general election, and the financial backing to succeed[4] were critical factors.

 

Training was a critical component. Intensive organizer trainings called Camp Obamas took place across the country, and programs like the Obama Organizing Fellows taught supporters how to become community organizers. Campaign staff in headquarters were taught a revolutionary view that the headquarters’ role was not just to call the shots, but to think about how they could help the states[5]. With the campaign’s overarching focus on the field, it only follows that any study of the campaign’s use of socially networked data is best seen through the eyes of a field organizer.

 

At these trainings, a few principles were emphasized to thousands of field organizers, who learned two bedrock principles of organizing:

 

 

The campaign developed a culture stressing that campaign management spent precious resources based on field data. Organizers were taught that the campaign would adjust resources based on results; therefore, reporting accurate information instead of inflated numbers was crucial. While the drive to impress higher-ups and coworkers created a strong incentive to up one’s numbers, any information from the field that was less than accurate could jeopardize national strategy.

 

Accurate reporting is essential on any campaign. During the Obama campaign, Voter File Managers and Field Directors often reminded the field organizers that data - and smart reaction to it - would determine the outcome of the election. Tracking the organizing outcomes of every minute of every hour of an organizers’ time was critical for accountability, enabling staff at every level to calculate where resources should be targeted. The goal could be prioritizing a "rockstar" region, or an area that was routinely falling short of daily goals. The constant stream of data from the field enabled smarter organizing, manpower where it was demanded, and gentle reprimands at a lack of results.

 

Regions that were struggling to register voters took a good, hard look at their methods, and evaluated the locations they were sending volunteers to, the type of conversations that were happening with these voters, and a more realistic sense of vote goals for that area. Without these steps organizations cannot live up to their full potential, and people within organizations cannot live up to their full potential.

 

Organizers had many roles and tasks, and field leadership required constant reporting on progress towards daily and weekly goals. For many, this was an opportunity for volunteers to get hired, or organizers to be promoted. Since the information was transparent to their peers and bosses alike, social rewards and a competitive spirit became more important rewards for performance than monetary compensation.

 

The constant stream of data from the field enabled smarter organizing, manpower where it was demanded, and gentle reprimands at a lack of results. Regions that were struggling to register voters re-evaluated the locations they were sending volunteers to, the type of conversations occurring, and tweaked vote goals to match real conditions.

 

Regional Field Directors were expected to have a solid staff, and nightly conference calls between regions became fierce battles to report the most voters registered or people at a rally or calls made. During the February 5th primaries and the General Election, states were constantly competing with each other to turn out the highest percentage of the electorate to the polls.

 

This personal quest to prove oneself, regional and state competition, and overall drive to win the campaign created a constantly simmering fight to produce the best numbers.

 

Data transparency was a major factor in maintaining the integrity of data on the Obama campaign. This transparency existed for both “soft” reporting – qualitative assessments or self-reported data not directly mapped to a voter file or database – and “hard” data, information keyed directly to the voter file or volunteer database. With both methods, information was shared widely among the regional staff, maintaining a constant level of accountability to both one’s boss and one’s peers.

 

The team structures on the Obama campaign – whether referring to neighborhood teams, geographic groupings of organizers, or simply the persons present within a given physical office space, greatly facilitated data transparency.

 

Team data transparency meant sharing the day's results with all who had worked to get those results. A lateral view of the team structure supported shared data collection, with soft numbers shared with the entire group. Often, results would be shared with volunteers and staff in creative ways, such as ringing a bell when a volunteer hit 50 calls, posters for canvassers who completed their walk-packets, and goal thermometers taped on office walls tracking total phone calls or doors knocked.

 

Online tools empowered campaigns to bring these concepts of clear, measurable and specific outcomes to light in a visually engaging, social networked way. The Obama campaign developed several of these tools (complimented by existing models), to refine a national system of data reporting, volunteer tracking and online volunteering. This online accountability helped to keep the staff competitive while maintaining honestly and loyalty to the campaign’s need for accurate reporting.

 

 

The Obama Campaign, heralded for innovative data methods, did not apply a uniform national system for field organizers to report data to their supervisors. Throughout the campaign, leadership was given leeway to devise their own methods for collecting and tracking percentage to goal in real-time or for nightly reporting. Some opted for conference call reporting, while others only pulled hard numbers from the voter file. In a few early primary states, organizers simply emailed in their tallies, while many states opted for open-editing tools like Google spreadsheets or Edit Grid (which quickly became complex series of people, dates, rows, tabs and data). The reporting systems were a diverse rainbow or logistical nightmare, depending on whom you asked.

 

During the primary, staff shifts from state to state meant that each staffer was accustomed to different methods of reporting in their data based on their last supervisor and state leadership. Some states focused on gathering quantitative data only. Others collected qualitative, personal “ups and downs” from their field staff on calls and via online reporting systems (e.g. The Internet in the office was down for four hours today so I couldn’t complete my confirmation emails, but I had time for more calls and team building so I was able to get a higher commitment from my Neighborhood Team Leader to host a house party on Tuesday.)

 

As soon as staff became proficient with one reporting method, enabling them to count and report their day’s work more quickly each night, they would encounter a new system in their next state. These divergent data methods caused some strain. Sometimes, incentives were taken out of the system – such as the aggregation and anonymization of field organizer reported information for reporting to higher authorities, leading to a lack of credit.

 

Adding to this shift in methodology and personnel was the shift in outcomes. At different stages in the campaign, the types of reported data differed, including such diverse results as:

 

 

Changing systems, outcomes and personnel hurts organizer’s ability to work efficiently and understand what was expected of them. Needs and outcomes were in constant flux. This dynamic, combined with the lack of national systems for data reporting at a time when organizers were continually shifting locations, sometimes created a jumble of data reporting. Expectations should stay constant, however, even when personnel shifts. This brings us to a key lesson for 2012: Reporting for field staff’s qualitative and quantitative data should be uniform and online whenever possible.

 

Some of the most effective data sharing measures were online. During the long primary and general campaign, existing reporting tools and newly developed ones were utilized for lateral data reporting. While these tools had their drawbacks at times, it’s valuable to analyze them for their best practices for the 2012 cycle.

 

One of the earliest and best uses of data-sharing was an online tool called “PA Teams,” developed by Obama  staff and used during the Pennsylvania primary. This tool was designed and built around the classic Obama Neighborhood Teams model, matching volunteers to other volunteers in their neighborhoods and tasking them with leadership roles. PA Teams was used to encourage neighborhood teams to call and canvass together, tracking reported results in a team account to keep team members accountable to each other and grow their work every weekend.

 

PA Teams was integral in stressing that the dynamic on the ground should match the dynamic online. Neighborhood teams, formed with the guidance of field organizers on the campaign, were operating as small hubs, running their own canvasses, phone banks, and data collection. Using PA Teams, their online work was maintained as a collective effort, matching their group interactions as if they were all working side-by-side in a field office. When a neighborhood team member signed on to the site to download numbers of potential supporters to contact, they could see a complete tally of their team member’s calls made and total usage.

 

This transparency was aimed at increasing the group pull towards their goal, airing the amount of work team members were (or were not) doing to the entire group. Because of PA Teams, the convenience of turning volunteers’ homes into field offices wasn’t sacrificed to the culture of working as a group towards a collective goal.

 

These systems of data sharing helped spur on the national online call and canvass tool for volunteers, which was called “Neighbor to Neighbor.” Neighbor to Neighbor, developed by the Democratic National Committee and known internally as n2n, allowed volunteers to input their address and pull a list of calls to make or voters to canvass who were located either in their neighborhood (for residents of battleground states), in their sister state (for volunteers in non-targeted states), or related to them by a demographic connection (women calling women, health care professionals to other health care workers, small business owners, etc). After the volunteer's activities were completed, their data would be sent in to field organizers in their district to approve and view the data through MyCampaign, on the VAN.

 

As opposed to the PA Teams system, however, n2n volunteers were not matched with fellow volunteers. From their perspective their data was sent off to the Internet abyss, taking away the critical feedback mechanism of keeping data accountable to other volunteers and staffers in an open and transparent way. The n2n help desk FAQ had to include a response to the commonly-asked “how do I know what other volunteers are using this?”

 

A team system like PA Teams combined with the functionality of local lists like n2n, however, would have gone a long way in spurring on effective volunteer action.

 

Attempting to address this issue, the Obama campaign created the Activity Tracker on it’s internal social network website, My.BarackObama.com. Known as MyBO, this system was designed with the functionality of online human interaction styles carefully in mind. Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, and director of the Online Organizing team on the campaign, shaped MyBO to follow the best practices of online engagement. Hughes knew that teams needed more to push them towards a collective action, and created the MyBO activity tracker in the summer of 2008 to help facilitate team structure online.

 

When supporters signed in to their MyBO accounts, they were placed onto a personalized page, showing them their blog, their friends, and their activity tracker. The activity tracker ranked supporters on a scale of 1 – 10 based on their recent contributions via MyBO and n2n. Voter contact activities, such as canvassing and phone banking, were given the most points towards a higher activity ranking, and holding events, fundraising, joining MyBO groups, and adding friends on MyBO followed close behind.

 

Moving into the activity tracker feature on their page, the supporter could see the MyBO groups that they belonged to, and how their activity shaped up compared to their other group members. The activity was 100% transparent – every group member could see all other activity points, divided by activity type, of each other group member.

 

The activity tracker incentivized volunteers to be more involved on MyBO, but it also played the important role of connecting online volunteers to their group, creating a more human element to using the site.

 

While Neighbor to Neighbor was connected to this activity tracker, it did not have its own stand-alone team data component. Its lack of connectivity is a good lesson for online data/outcome tracking. When outcomes are shared among a group, the person reporting that outcome is both encouraged by and kept accountable to that group. This holds true for staffers and volunteers. National Field, another online reporting tool that has since evolved into a company, is one reporting system that was built upon this theory.

 

While National Field is one of many emerging national online volunteer and outcomes tracking systems, I believe it shows a high level of understanding of the concepts that Ganz says are so critical to leadership and success.

 

National Field was launched by campaign staffers, once they apprehended a need to streamline the somewhat-haphazard nightly reporting system. Used in the general election in Georgia, Ohio and for a few weeks in Florida, the program was built upon the campaign's eagerness to provide shared measurable outcomes in the field, and the brains behind National Field built their online tool around the idea that every person needs to be measured around the same metrics so results could be compared.

 

Aharon Wasserman, one of the staffers of National Field, stressed the campaign's continual need for more nuanced information when reporting. "People would ask 'Oh, how did you do today'," Wasserman explains, "but that's not enough. At first as an organizer, I didn't get how important it was, but as soon as you become a manager -- that's when you understand what's so important about measuring information." By tapping the National Field's reporting system, Wasserman contends, managers and organizers were able to deeply drill down on the data that was coming back from the field, focusing on specific comparable metrics to highlight results.

 

National Field’s platform is a bit like Facebook. It provides a personal sign-in page with regional divisions of data surfacing in real time. The data was visually set apart into graphs and charts, and easily comparable regionally or state-wide.

 

National Field enabled users to supplement their information with pluses and deltas about their day, highlighting organizers best and worst parts about their day to glean qualitative along with the quantitative to paint a picture of the landscape behind the numbers reported. In fact, just as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter foster a culture of constant updating, socially networked data systems like National Field require daily updates of thoughts and experiences, right along with the usual numbers to match up results.

 

Socially networked data easily fit into the Obama campaign’s team structure system. The team structures focused on the snowflake model of organizing - spreading out responsibility and accountability to a group of evenly-tasked individuals. Organizers, in standing with this team structure, could see a leader board and compare their day's results with their fellow organizers, using graphs and charts to portray the work completed. In this fashion, the online reporting systems closely matched the mantra of the campaign, empowering everyone, at all levels, to have access to goals and results.

 

National Field’s creators cite the site’s interactive nature and openness as key to its success.

 

Justin Lewis, an organizer in Georgia and Ohio, helped create the program and is currently tasked with its marketing and development. After being assigned to collect nightly reporting from staff in Georgia, Lewis was flooded with information from different mediums. Hundreds of organizers dutifully reported in their numbers in a mix of emails, Google Docs and a handful of other formats every night. After they started reporting in, Lewis would have 20 minutes to compile the data and turn it around to the campaign’s Chicago Headquarters. Realizing he was spending more time compiling and standardizing data than actually using it, Lewis began working on a comprehensive data collection tool built on an easy to use system.

 

National Field can "drive everyone to do a little bit better because there's a level of lateral organizing," Lewis believes, connecting people across a campaign hierarchy.

 

Wasserman agrees. "By giving people the data [on] how they were doing to their peers, it changes from an organization where people are being managed from an organization where people are self-managing," he explains. "Previously, the campaign was the black hole of reporting - numbers were sent away and wasn't part of their strategy the next day. There was no way to compare one week to the other."

 

Integrating online reporting systems for volunteers with the requirements for staff reporting, however, might ease these issues. Neighbor to Neighbor received limited attention from field staffers since the work of volunteers using the online call/canvass system often wasn’t counted in the field staff’s nightly progress towards goal. With online reporting systems that count the work of online volunteers in a Field Organizer’s goals, systems like this would become relied upon instead of pushed to the back burner.

 

To be sure, Neighbor to Neighbor did not follow some critically socially networked data principles While volunteers were actively using and reporting in their work – and the work had to be “approved” by a field staffer – the staffers were not adding the volunteer’s results to their nightly tallies. This caused a gap between online volunteer reporting and in-office volunteer reporting. Staff placed their priority on encouraging the volunteers in their offices to turn out more calls and knocks. Limited time, if any, was spent on following up with online volunteers and encouraging them to turn out more calls and knocks.

 

Online tools for volunteers have huge potential. These tools are not only increasing overall efficiency, I believe they have the potential to change the power and communication dynamics within the normally top-down world of electoral campaigns. If systems like Neighbor to Neighbor are looped in with efficient data tracking methods like the ones discussed here, there’s opportunity to connect volunteers, staff, and campaign leadership with transparent and useful data from the field.

 

Systems similar to the structure of National Field are useful because they spark previously unobtainable collaborative discussion between grassroots organizers and senior management. PA Teams helped drive this engagement between staff and volunteer team members, pushing this lateral communication between supporters in a system that fostered competition. This engagement, National Field staffer Lewis notes, "not only made things easier and faster, but allowed everyone involved in the campaign to have a look at what was going on." Seeing is believing.

 

 

In the end, socially networked, shared measurable outcomes can transcend the potentially “insider” concerns of campaign operatives. Providing goals, and an outlet for reporting the work towards these goals, is crucial for an empowered, networked volunteer community – and citizenry.

 

Just consider: what turns a supporter into a volunteer? Supporters are willing to give up their time, resources and daily routines. They reroute their lives and put themselves out of their comfort zone because they simply believe in a candidate, campaign or cause. This sacrifice needs to be returned with respect and value by a campaign – and I think that includes sharing goals and outcomes.

 

Volunteers are often sent out to the battleground, armed with scripts, voter registration cards, volunteer sign up sheets, stickers, and pledge cards. They are expected to bring their spoils back to the office after their work is complete. On busy campaigns, it is rare that the average walk-in volunteer receives a summary of the ground game, or the day's goal for the activity at hand, or the larger strategic imperatives and progress.

 

Even after they return with the results of their work, volunteers often miss a second valuable part of shared measurable outcomes - the chance to report back to a staff member, or even a fellow volunteer, about what they accomplished. Too often, volunteers are also expected to jump right into another activity after completing the first one. Tallied canvass sheets are dropped in a pile, and volunteers are either pointed to a refreshment table or a phone bank, as the Field Organizer tells them about their other options for doing even more work. We should stop to consider that this system can shortchange volunteers’ sense of accomplishment, group belonging, understanding of goals and even buy-in for the next task at hand. This is why internal volunteer systems like PA Teams and National Field are so valuable in connecting data from the staff laterally to their volunteers.

 

Socially networked data will make waves in campaigns over the next four years by bridging former communication gaps. Through transparency, accountability and responsibility – three common buzzwords – organizers will not just be held accountable by their bosses, but by their peers as well. Socially networked data creates bonds at the peer-to-peer level, and, in turn, creates a self-motivation to match and surpass your peers to meet the demands of the campaign. By 2012, organizers, developers and leadership should have no reason to pass up investing in socially networked data. After all, self-motivation is the best motivation. 

 

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