On February 28th, Former New Haven Alderman Gerry Garcia called into my daughter’s radio show to talk about his run for Connecticut Secretary of State. One of the first questions that Fiona asked him was, “What does the Secretary of State do?” It seems like a good candidate should be able to explain the office he is running for to an eight year old. It also seems like a lot of people don’t really understand how State Government works, and the explanation might be helpful to listeners not as informed about how government works.

The recent articles about the current Secretary of State’s Constituent Relationship Management database seems to reflect some of this lack of understanding about how government works. Everyone is focusing on the potential political uses of the database, since it was obtained by a freedom of information request by the Friends of Susan 2010 campaign, presumably for political uses. Yet in doing so, they are overlooking the much more important story about how our government works, and how it could work better.

Many organizations use CRMs, sometimes called Client, Customer, or Constituent Relationship Management Systems, depending on the context. A good CRM should have a section for notes about the constituents. The Secretary of State’s is no exception. Of the nearly thirty seven thousand names in the database, around seven thousand have special notes. These special notes provide some insight into the working of the Secretary of State’s office.

For example, 269 of the notes talk about people being candidates of some sort. Another 138 talk specifically about people running for State Representative. 117 people were noted as complaining about various important issues, 113 were listed as CEOs who have important interactions with the Secretary of State’s Office, 55 people were listed as being involved in various zoning boards, 37 provided nicknames that people preferred to be called and 17 noted that various phone numbers were unlisted.

Likewise, some people have raised concern about the ethnicity data that is tracked. This is standard information that many systems track and is usually asked during surveys. Of the six and a half percent of the records that have ethnicity information, the largest group is Polish with 1251, with around a quarter of them being elected officials. The second largest group with 629 members were Hispanics. About 20% of the Hispanics listed were elected officials.

While this information may not be as colorful as comments about people’s beards or hats, it is the bulk of the information that is gathered. Yet even stylistic information or whether a person prefers to bow instead of shake hands is important for elected officials to know when they meet and talk with them.

The information about how we are perceived by people in office is very interesting to all of us, and I’ve had several people ask for information about how they are listed or for copies of the database. People interested in reviewing the data themselves are encouraged to contact me directly. I will note that my record in the database lists me as being interested in ‘Election Practices, Ballot Access, etc.’

Perhaps the real story that needs to be investigated is about what public information various State Agencies have. How easy is it to get this information? Are there ways that State Agencies could better organize data and improve services to constituents.

As part of this, I sent an Freedom of Information request for copies of constituent databases to the Governor’s Office, the Lt. Governor’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, the Secretary of State’s Office, the Treasurer’s Office and the Comptroller’s Office. The Secretary of State’s Office was quickest in replying and easily produced the information I was looking for. The Treasurer’s and Comptroller’s Offices said that they do not have any sort of constituent database. They offered to provide me access to the chronological logs of people contacting their office, but for my current research, I did not find that of value.

The Attorney General’s Office took a little longer to reply. They have a complicated database for tracking communications. It is much larger than the Secretary of State’s database, both in terms of the number of people tracked, and the information stored. The technology staff calculated that it would take about four hours time to extract the data and make it available. At the rate they are paying their staff, it would cost me about $218 to obtain that data. At this point, it is not worth that much to me. However, if people want to chip in, I might revisit the request. It is worth noting that people involved in various law cases that the Attorney General is involved with, or in potential class action law cases in other states, similar to cases in Connecticut frequently request information from the Attorney General’s Office under Freedom of Information Laws.

The Lt. Governor’s office took a few days to respond and said they are researching it with their information technology staff. That was a month ago, and there has been no further word on what their research has turned up.

The Governor’s office has gone back and forth with me clarifying exactly what data they have. Their data is in a Microsoft Access database. It is also apparently a large database and it contains a free form field for notes about constituents. It does not appear to have ethnicity data but it does have information about positions on various bills. In my most recent discussion with the Governor’s office they said they would need to redact certain confidential information such as personal contact information for State Police Officers and Judges so I’m still waiting for my copy of the data.

We need to think seriously about how our government is run; what data they have, how they can make it more accessible while protecting people’s privacy, and how technology can be used to make government more efficient. The current issue about the Secretary of State’s Constituent Relations Database could be a great opportunity to do this. Or, it could be used for titillating but not very well founded attacks on political candidates. Unfortunately, right now, the latter seems to be the case.