How One CIO Performed Database Magic in 6 Weeks
Alec Palmer, CIO for the Federal Election Commission had a clear mandate from his business side: Our database presentation tool doesn't serve the public well. Fix it. And he did, in-house, with no extra staff, for $12,000, in 6 weeks, using a map-based tool from Corda. Doesn’t fit your existing perception of government IT? Maybe you can learn a few things from his approach. And thanks to his project, any citizen can now learn who's funding what presidential campaigns -- much easier than was previously possible. The new interactive tool launches publicly today, take a peek here.
The FEC administers U.S. law regarding campaign funding, including limits and rules regarding donations by individuals, political action committees, and campaign groups. It also shares the relevant campaign funding data regarding presidential and congressional campaigns with the public. Prior to this effort, the FEC already had a database of donation data online, but it wasn't pretty, says Palmer. If you wanted to do research, "you could do it but it took many, many steps," he says.
The revamped database tool achieves a goal that many CIOs would like to emulate: Take key data for business side or external customers and present it in an attractive, useful way on the Web. The new database tool lets you click on a map of the United States to drill down on presidential campaign contributions by candidate name, state, or even zip code. You can sort the data in numerous intuitive ways.
So if, for example, you want to research how Rudy Giuliani's contributions are stacking up against Mitt Romney's in your home zip code, this tool is just the ticket. It's also a good choice if, say, you want to see who your town's mayor is supporting financially. All the data cuts and pastes to Excel. (Previously, all you would have had available was a list of contributors for each candidate, in alphabetical order, but not sortable by geography.)
In the late summer or early fall, the FEC will roll out a second tool, using the same technology, with congressional election funding data.
What's interesting about this project? It's not data that's been buried. Several public interest groups, namely the Center for Responsive Politics are tracking 2008 presidential campaign dollars. Also, the New York Times has a similar campaign funding map, (coincidentally, built using
Previous Post: Microsoft Debuts Touch-Driven Tabletop PCNext Post: Microsoft Fights Search War With Freebies
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
