00:49 - 06.01.06
I don't care anymore
Yesterday was a fairly productive day, although not in the way others might measure it. First up was a visit from the Automation co-ordinator and Assistant Returning Officer from one of the Electoral Districts where everyone is new, including all the senior staff. They are very skilled people, but that doesn't mean that they aren't struggling to get up to speed with some of the hidden shoals in the electoral process.Their specific concerns? Why was their voters'list, their poll key and streets database so messed up and how could they organize themselves to repair the worst of the problems. I took them through what we knew about the sources of the problems, by going through those memos from four or five years ago. The ones forwarded to headquarters in Ottawa. You know - those memos that I re-sent to headquarters at the beginning of the week. The ones where nothing has been heard now except dead silence. Each of my three tech support staff explained the segment of the process of remediation that they were responsible for and how they they had thought about and organized themselves to address their tasks. The Automation Co-ordinator for the other electoral district builds computers both as a hobby and as a living. He's worked for the government for a decade. Knows his stuff. The Assistant Returning Officer's last contract was with the homeless population in Calgary. She likes chaos, change and creativity, so we got along swimmingly. Her background was in film and cinematography. Wonder what she'll do with the the experiences she gathers in this endeavour. Maybe she can produce the screenplay for the Behind the Ballot Box book that needs to be written by those of us who adiminsiter elections. The two of them left us armed with as much information as we could offer. The Automation co-ordinator asked if I could spare my youngest to work with him for a while - certainly. My youngest needs to learn how to work for and with people other than me. He already has more expertise than most people twice his age with respect to the type of work we do, but application and integration of activity with other work styles isn't something he has been exposed to before. We will likely be done by the weekend, so my three young wizards could all be spared to help, if they are wanted and useful to that group.
The afternoon was spent working with my assistant. We did some staffing change ups as one set of staff leave our employ for school or holidays in tropical climates and staff from last election who weren't available back in December return to the fold. Some of our new rising stars are being moved up and into more challenging positions too. The shift midway also allows us to mitigate one of two staffing errors I made early on. Not that the person isn't a good person - they just don't cope well with the constant change, need to learn new skills and pressure that is part of their responsibilities. Not demoting them, but bringing in someone who will keep them on track and focussed when their current team mate leaves for another country. The other person who is an issue has finally got the message that the only job they are to pay attention to is their own - meddling in everyone else's responsibilities is not acceptable. Our team of community outreach staff are gelling nicely and we are starting to achieve some of the goals I had had for that aspect of the election tasks as well. We also worked on setting the times for our mobile poll staff to visit all the seniors' residences we had targetted for direct visits. With the election falling on what is traditionally the coldest day of our calendar year, ensuring the elderly and disabled don't have to leave their homes to vote is a priority. If only we could convince the tech staff in Ottawa that the paperwork and material produced from their software needs to work for those Canadians instead of against our ability to provide our services. Deadline for all that is tomorrow. I think my threat to revert to an old paper election might have to be carried out. So be it.
At five my phone rang. One of the candidates is here for the joint meeting. Apparently his staff hadn't caught up with him to let him know that we had had to change the time of the meeting to accommodate the work schedule of the one youth pastor running for office. When I went to the reception area, I realized that this candidate wouldn't be able to attend the next night. He'd already booked several other meetings for that time. Well I really hadn't thought I would ever find a time that would work for all five in a three day window on such short notice and I didn't have the heart to send him away when he was obviously completely exhausted. Sat him down in my office, gave him my sandwich and went over the paperwork I had been assembling that afternoon in preparation for the real meeting, while fussing over the staffing and mobile polls. The technology breakdown I was frustrated with meant there were certain documents that I couldn't give him. I promised to send those off to his campaign office when the other candidates had received theirs today. He is a seasoned campaigner, so I cut to the chase and went through basically the same process with him as with the team from the other Returning Office around the elector list and database problems so he could adjust his analysis of the data we produce to account for the errors and hidden snags that were sent to us from Ottawa. Explained about our own weaknesses too. Provided the same written memos I forwarded to Ottawa at the beginning of the wekk as well, so that they could do their own troubleshooting. Campaigns these days are very much like military operations. What you don't know can trip one up big time. Forewarned is forearmed. Sorry for all the cliches, but fatigue is shutting down all my mental receptors except those that are necessary to get my tasks done.
Today was almost a repeat of yesterday, except the the group meeting with us this morning was the addressing specialist flown in to our province from Ottawa and their local rep. He was not all that interested in hearing what we had to say at the beginning of the meeting. He was more focussed on articulating the head office mantra, frustrating the assembled team of staff while he went over the most basic of procedures with us. Finally broke through the barriers wrapped around him by Ottawa, simply by producing piece after piece of information we have collected and repaired, starting with those memos beginning from four years ago. Apparently he had only been given selective snippets from them that wold have created an impression that was completely out of line with what we are actually faced with. The local rep seemed quite unprepared for the degree of detail and information that we had to offer. Each of my techs went through their processes and fixes after I provided the historical context. My automation co-ordinator and I kept working on his responses until we got the answers that had been refused us from Ottawa for the past two elections - simply by not accepting or acknowledging the Ottawa line that he had been prepared to unload on us. Several hours later, the two of them left laden with an awful lot of paper containing the data he needs to clean up the segments of problems that are his responsibility - if Ottawa allows him to that is. It appears he is a consultant like us. His job could hang on preserving the head office line at the expense of the reality. Part of that line is that the three segregated teams of data management work together. I'd be willing to bet that they only meet twice a year at corporate functions that have nothing to do with the day to day services and products that they supply. He would neither look me in the eye nor shake my hand when he left, although he was quite friendly with the rest of the team. Can't do much about that now can I?
The balance of the afternoon I worked between regular responsibilities. Proofing the ballot, talking with both Ottawa and my printer about that. A call from one of the other Returning Officers - they were missing part of the artwork/camera readies for their ballots - did I have the paperwork? Yes, of course. Come by and take what you need. One of their staff arrived just as the rest of the candidates showed up for the real candidates meeting that the act mandates we conduct. Three full dress rehearsals with the one returning office team, the lone candidate and the Ottawa team meant that the presentation of the essential information came trippingly to the tongue. The lone candidate's agent had arrived to sit in on the meeting. Making certain their team didn't get shortchanged where information or documents provided was concerned. He always asks really thoughtful, insightful questions. Three of the candidates and parties are relative newcomers. I think that helped them feel more confident about their own efforts as well as providing them with some idea of where to focus their efforts. They got the same historical paperwork about problems with the lists and poll/street data. I don't believe that they had realized the amount of work that was required to provide them with the clean maps and lists they were needing. I told them about the visit from the Ottawa specialist that morning and just stated that we were all working toward providing them with the best possible tools we could produce. No point inducting them in to the politics that permeate the bureaucracy but I couldn't, in good conscience, lie to them and pass off the head office mantra that there is a 95% accuracy rating for those products. It just isn't so. Telling them what was occurring on a go forward basis as well as showing them the progress we had made so far this event seemed the most ethical approach I could devise. Doubt that Ottawa's leadership will see it that way though. An hour later they were all off with their data and we were back to trying to get the technology to work for us for the next day's dress rehearsal of the the night of the election, as well as producing the statutory documents that must be done by Saturday. Think an old typewriter might be my best bet for success at this point. Ain't progress wonderful.
High points of my day? A visit with the woman who will co-ordinate my hospital voting. She had come in to train our hospital workers and stayed for a visit at the end of the day. We had first met on the Go Plan committee about 15 years ago as volunteers.The Go Plan was supposed to be the framework for developing the city's rapidly burgeoning transportation and transit system. We were the only two people who had ever taken a bus or who walked at all to get to our destinations. In Calgary that was almost blasphemy at the time. Environmental consciousness hadn't even been an item on most citizens' radar. Most often when those types of items were mentioned in the press it was linked with hidden communist agendas. Whatever. Now we have much better transit and pedestrian solutions, although there is still a great deal of room for improvement. Go Denver. We also talked about some of the family support volunteer work we had done together subsequent to our city planning gig. We both have similar philosophies when it comes to that type of service for disadvantaged or sick Calgarians and it doesn't include warehousing people. Those types of issues keep raising their heads during this time period and I expect that they will coalesce into their own "next step on the path" sometime soon. The other fun part was when my young male community outreach worker informed me that he had persuaded the local Hooters restaurant to place a poster in the men's washroom. Well we were told to place those posters where young people most often gather. As long as it leads them to vote. Right now I think my path leads to my pillow. Good Night Dear Diary.
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