Last week Dan Fox’s proposal on data development loans was voted top f the policies for supporting entrepreneurship at the latest Pragmatic Radicalism event, chaired by Chuka Umunna MP the shadow secretary of state for business.
“Described by pollsters as a weather-vane constituency, it is contemporary information technologies making a difference this week. Jill tapped the side of her Google Glass display and began directing canvassers. “The Harrises. Last time we spoke to them, they complained about the daily commute. Can you get up that chart of rail fares and investment?” Swiping away at his iPad, Jack strolled off, armed with all he needed to connect, both electronically and emotionally, with the voters at number 23. On the opposite kerb, two of his colleagues were not having quite as much luck generating an augmented reality view of the lighting and paving repairs that had taken place on the street since Labour had taken over the local council in 2013.”
Election Sketch, The Times, 9 May 2015
For those who still feel that the biro and clipboard are unnecessary luxuries on the #labourdoorstep, the thought of handheld devices brimming with electronic data being at the centre of elections is at best bewildering. But data is now, as we all know, “Big”. It is all around us and has a permanence in our daily lives akin to a new way of communicating, helping us to understand what we and others are doing and will do. Campaigning is not insulated from this. Last year, Obama For America, set the standard for using Big Data in identifying, motivating and expanding the numbers of your voters. Labour looks set to reflect these techniques.
However, before we get too caught up in a vision of campaignbots traipsing around the marginals like canvassing Terminators, we should also consider the policy significance of Big Data. Although it has not been a great couple of weeks for data of any kind – in the news for all the wrong reasons as the full extent of the surveillance of the personal variety has been exposed – this must not distract us from the thousands of positive, world-changing uses of mass data collection and analysis.
