Educators trying to
establish educational needs and to identify target constituencies and country
infrastructures may, at first glance, assume that they have to do this from
scratch. Perhaps they will, but a little time spent investigating existing data
sources will have a number of benefits:
- less time needed for conducting
an investigation
- lower overall costs
- gaps identified that allow more
focused research
- general data gaps discovered to
consider for more general developmental purposes
There are very few places
where nothing is known. And there are very few places where there is no
existing source of information. The trick in some closed or authoritarian
societies, however, may be getting access to existing information.
International organisations
will want to work closely with indigenous ones to access existing data. Often
they are unaware of existing repositories of knowledge, particularly if it is
of an oral and traditional nature, and they are often amongst the first to assume
that something new and impressive must be done. But those working on election
programmes need to understand their work within the larger democratization
framework. Good information is needed by those who govern and by civil society.
And elections should stimulate the gathering and availability of that
information.
Paper, People, or
Bytes
Information available in
computer databases has the advantage of being easily updated and maintained as
well as moved from one place to another. When carefully collected and where
software and hardware planning has been done, databases can be remarkable. They
can also be frustrating, however, especially in developing countries.
Information may be stored in incompatible formats, or it may be out of date,
incomplete, and often locked away. Computers can be a curse as well as a
champion of open democracy.
Information on paper does
not suffer from compatibility problems. Here the problems are ease of handling,
whether the documents and publications are available, preservation, and the
cost for revisions.
People See Only As
Far As Their Horizon.
Those looking for data will
want to look at questions of reliability, accessibility, and cost. In some
settings, for example where there have been authoritarian systems, there may be
no official culture of "freedom of information." Government
bureaucrats may be irresponsible to requests for information. They may consider
it privileged or even a state secret. There is also a danger that data
collected by the government has been manipulated for political reasons. So even
if it is made publicly available, it may be of little use to educators.
But even accurate data
presents educators with a variety of usability issues. This is because there is
a virtual sea of information that requires careful selection. Educators will
want to establish precisely what information they require and how they intend
to use it prior to even beginning the search. There will be iterations on these
questions, because once some information is available it leads to further
questions. Nevertheless focus is essential.
Look in the Obvious
Places
Voter rolls and related
data provide an
immediate starting point if these rolls have been collected nationally or
regionally. They will provide basic information about numbers of voters and
geographic dispersal. In developing countries and transitional societies,
however, voting rolls may be of poor quality. Educators in these types of
situations will need to assess how accurate and current the voting rolls are in
making a determination about their usability.
In order to establish the
rolls, information should also exist about registration officials, places where
registration has taken place, and possibly even places that were evaluated and
then not used. Amongst these places will be many public venues, such as
libraries, schools, community halls, clinics, and government offices, as well
as more temporary structures linked to community gathering places, such as
sports fields, markets, and so on.
Other basic information
will be available in forms that can vary from the rudimentary to the
highly computerized. Telephone directories can be useful as well as government directories,
income tax mailings and address list (where these are public documents),
television and radio licence lists, and market research.
Beyond this basic address
and geographic information, there will be government yearbooks and reports
on a wide variety of subjects. In poor countries, these reports may have been
done by international agencies or international companies interested in
development plans and opportunities.
In addition to reports with
a developmental focus, many countries have tourist bureaus and tourist
publications that contain basic country and travel information. Bus and
train timetables, hotel listings, contact offices for local information
bureaus, all increase the amount of information about the country
infrastructure and basic governance.
With the burgeoning of the
Internet, it has become possible to do worldwide searches for information
about countries. While not all of it may be held inside a country, it is
surprising what information may be held in an academic institution. At present,
access to such institutions in the western and northern hemispheres is greater
on the web. but these institutions often host information servers that link organisations
and networks in the southern hemisphere.
Beyond these basic sources
of information, there may be libraries, government departments, research
units linked to national, regional, and local governments, and national
and regional statutory research institutes. All of these collect information,
some of them will release it upon request and perhaps for a fee. International
and domestic NGOs have vast amounts of personal experience. Have collated
information about countries and are often willing to make this available more
freely than government departments.
Perhaps most useful of all,
but not always accessible, is the data collected in political and marketing
polls. The reason it is useful is its direct bearing on individual and
group attitudes and insights into issues that relate to elections. If it is
possible to develop a relationship with collectors of such survey information,
it is possible to request them to reanalyse existing data to address particular
questions voter educators may have.
All the sources and organisations
listed above have been collecting information not for electoral purposes but
for a variety of other reasons over an extended period of time. The
information, therefore, has breadth and depth that officials preparing for a
specific election period cannot hope to replicate.
At the same time, it
suffers from the fact that it has to be reorganized in forms that are useful to
educators. This may be difficult, time consuming, and costly. Data mismatches,
information collected from different periods and with varying degrees of
reliability, patchy information with biases towards cities and men, revenue
producing activity, and old political debates all conspires against the
compiler.
There may even be occasions
when the task of assembling this information is larger, more time consuming,
and more costly than going out and getting it anew. But this is unlikely in the
sphere where educators are working. Focusing on developing an understanding of
the voting population, the country infrastructure available to support the
educational programme, and getting a grip on educational needs faced by various
groups and audiences will all help to ensure that the data available can be
more cost effective than anticipated.
