Obama’s data management could keep him in the White House

CNN ran a story by Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, about the Obama campaign’s data crunching strategy. Sifry says Obama’s team is way ahead of Republicans on this because Republicans are still looking at the Internet as a broadcast tool, whereas the Obama team sees the web as much more: “Inside the Obama operation, his staff members are using a powerful social networking tool called NationalField, which enables everyone to share what they are working on. Modeled on Facebook, the tool connects all levels of staff to the information they are gathering as they work on tasks like signing up volunteers, knocking on doors, identifying likely voters and dealing with problems. Managers can set goals for field organizers — number of calls made, number of doors knocked — and see, in real time, how people are doing against all kinds of metrics.”