It seems trivial for the FEC to move the address of donors fields from the electronic files into the FTP files and most of the other things Aron suggests.

But as one who has worked with these things for a long time, I also am glad that the FTP filings remain stable. The single identifier would be a great thing (try doing a history on Hillary or Obama without it).

What I fear is that the Senate will finally be forced to go to electronic filing and the FTP files will go away. The electronic filing system, dictated by the software companies, is beyond horrible.

The other point I would make is that you should not expect “data quality” from the FEC. As a regulatory agency it is purposely weak (mainly regulating members of Congress), and I don’t think the agency uses the public disclosures in its regulatory audits of campaigns.

The quality of the data isn’t about to change. Why? The FEC isn’t going to enforce ‘quality’ reporting. This isn’t a criticism, but a realization that the law is so quirky, with so many exceptions, that errors are going to be common. Unfortunately, those few who chose to obfuscate in a critical reporting period will likely be able to do so in the short run.

Unless the FEC mandates donors to have unique identifiers (say for instance, SSN – something never likely to happen), there will always be uncertainty when aggregating donors by name. The same is true for ‘intent’ of donation…is it because of employment or ideology?

Although we in the data world like clean, constrained data, it’ll never happen with public records. The agencies have too small a budget and too little time to make timely checks on filed information.

In other words, it is what it is, and only good follow up reporting will make for uncertainty in data with so many anomalies.

BTW, almost all of the recent changes mandating ‘improved’ disclosure have in fact confused things. Much of the ‘extra’ data is duplicate (lobby bundling, for example).

One huge improvement would be to limit itemization of donors aggregating over $1,000 per cycle…that’s right, actually reducing disclosure. It would instantly make the data more manageable, protect privacy and let us zero in on the true heavy weights in our little world.

The Sunlight Foundation folks are on the money with their message to the FEC: Focus on data quality and accuracy first, then worry about the bells and whistles.

* Not when the FEC has been collecting full donor addresses since 2002 for all but Senators and the DSCC (last I checked the NRSC files electronically — only DSCC is a holdout), and cannot seem to bother itself to get those data out there except through the extraordinarily complex electronic filing system.

* Not when there is a mandate for committees to report names as five discreet data fields, yet it continues to shove them into a single field.

* Not when they STILL have employer/occuptation (again, separate data fields) shoved into a single field in the FTP data that is too small to accommodate them.

Frankly, my patience is wearing thin on this front. This has been the one thing people have been asking for for years, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to figure out: Keep the existing files, and create a new set of data files that actually reflects the data they collect. Done!

Hell, I’ll even volunteer to write the SQL to export those files if the FEC promises to actually produce them.

I support watchdogs more closely evaluating whether government data disclosure efforts live up to the letter and spirit of their legal mandates. Thank you for doing this.

Politicians can get a ton of good press for putting these things into law, but if the data products aren’t executed successfully then the whole thing doesn’t amount to much.

Will any of these new FEC products replace or greatly change your current campaign finance data collection process?