This post is less of an example of good practice, and more of an illustration of how technology is currently hampering best practice in one important area.

Politics is all about people, but its also about geographic neighbourhoods and communities.


To use data to help to understand voters and to understand where they are and how their neighbourhoods and communities work, data needs to be mapped out. And here is the problem. Mapping out data is tough. There is no excuse for an organization to not gather data and to produce tables and graphs from it. That technology is on everyone's computer and is extremely accessible. But technology hasn't yet brought mapping out data in to the hands of the many.

There are a number of barriers that make even basic maps (like the one above) out of the reach of most small organizations and political campaigns, including:

1. GIS programs are expensive and inaccessible. Many organizations don't have the money to buy them or to hold on to someone with the skills to use them. We need a way to get mapping out to organizations and campaigns without them having to invest in expensive software and staff with specialist skills.
   
   
2. Shapefiles are tough to acquire, often out of data and frequently almost impossible to match back to the data that you're trying to map out. Most organizations don't have the time to invest in finding, cleaning, checking and matching up shapefiles. We need an organization to gather recent shapefiles and make them available with a key that allows them to be matched back to other data sources. Or even better, we need a way to map out data without needing shapefiles to make it useable.
   
   
3. Output is inaccessible to most users. While a map like the ones above provide a helpful overview of the top-level information. A well-constructed pdf can allow user to zoom in and see more detail, but what is really needed is the ability to personalize it. For users to turn on and off features. To see satellite view, to see roads and then to zoom out and see just the data again if they so choose.

The only example I've yet seen of data really being mapped out in a way that non-expert users can access it and play with it combines data from a site that combined U.S. Census Bureau data with Google Maps. It's called World Wide Webfoot Maps (Thanks to Google Maps Mania).

Here is an example:


In this example someone has done (1) and (2) for you already. They've gathered the data and the shapefiles and matched them and programmed a web interface. What we need is some way for organizations and political campaigns to be able to upload their custom data and see it mapped out in an accessible way. I'm keeping my eye open for developments in this area, but please post a comment if you have ideas or solutions!