Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Transforming Information to Knowledge is the Current
Platform for a Successful Political Campaign
Vered Holzmann and Ben Holzmann
Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
veredhz@post.tau.ac.il
benami1@post.tau.ac.il
Abstract: This paper utilizes the data management systems of a political campaign to present a process that
transforms structured and unstructured information into knowledge and discusses the various aspects of such a
process in the world of political campaigns. A political campaign is a unique type of project that runs normally for
a period of several months. It peeks on Election Day, and at the end of the day the project is abruptly terminated
and its success, or its failure, is officially published. The project is considered a success if the candidate who is its
sole customer has obtained the majority of the votes casted. An official database that contains basic information
about the eligible voting electorate is issued to every contestant at the beginning of the campaign. This original
database is enriched during the project with information related to the voters, volunteers, budgets, events and
analyses results thus providing the corner stone for the knowledge structure supporting most of the project’s
managerial decisions. In the quest to understand the nature of knowledge management and its roots we limited
our research to the specific arena of political campaigns, where we investigated the impact of the quality of the
original data on the desired knowledge management tools derived from the various data analyses. Another issue
we confronted dealt with the procedures of learning associated with the production of political campaign related
knowledge, where we adopted the concept that knowledge management is a continuous and dynamic process
which analyzes archived data from debriefings of past events in order to better understand current trends and
incidents for the purpose of supporting a constant improvement of managerial decision making habits (Neef,
2005). We further maintain that the efficiency of the knowledge management contribution to the decision making
procedures depends heavily on the accuracy of the original debriefing process of every single incident (Roth and
Kleiner, 1998). The paper focuses on the analysis of a specific type of project, using a detailed description of a
case study to present the nature of its unique characteristics and associated various problems. We hope that our
research may contribute a minute addition to the body of knowledge of the two disciplines: information
management and project management, and might encourage managers of political campaigns to instigate event
debriefings and develop effective learning procedures in order to create a knowledge structure that could be
utilized in future campaigns.
Keywords: knowledge management; political campaigns; clustering; learning;
1. Introduction
The notion that an election is the modern democratic method, by which the majority of the members of
any community exercise their power to choose their governing representatives and secure their
preferences, is a fairy tale. In reality an election is decided by those who actually bothered to go to
their assigned polling locations and actually casted their vote. Normally only a part of the eligible
voting body plays the game. Thus, the outcome of the election represents the preferences of the
majority of merely one segment of the total population, the segment that actually voted. Hence, every
political campaign is in essence a fast track project designed to achieve two objectives. The first
objective is to convince as many eligible voters as possible, that the particular candidate shares most
of their views, and will best represent their preferences while in office. The second objective is to
collect and maintain a dynamic database containing all the necessary information to mobilize the
entire body of team members, during Election Day, to persuade every supporter to go to his pre
assigned polling station and actually cast his vote for the candidate.
A political campaign is extremely complicated to manage due to its rigid schedule, unstable budget
frame, but mostly because of the nature of its employees that are traditionally volunteers. Only a few
professionals can be hired to participate in the project, due to widespread constrains imposed on the
project’s financing system which depends mostly on donations that are controlled by particularly rigid
laws. While these chosen ones are assigned to perform unique political and managerial tasks, the
bulk of the legwork is carried out by the volunteers who depend on accurate detailed information
identifying the individuals they must convince to perform their voting duty.
Political campaigns are driven by three engines, the density of the related media, the determination of
the project’s foot soldiers and the quality of the project’s information management system. Alas, this
paper investigates only the issue of the information management aspects and their part in the
knowledge structure that provides the managerial tools for the campaign management.
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