Christmas lunch

This is the picture after the battle

  

Time to verify that there is a family, that they have not forgotten you, eat and drink.

Also good time to recap activities of the last months.

In fact, a lot of expectations accompagnied of few facts, but not reaching the minimum expectations. In fact, I've only some investigation paths, and a very limited set of data to work.
I'm starting to understand the time frame of this kind of research projects: nobody is expecting you to serve your interests.
I will use the 10 days of Christmas Holidays to see what can I do with the already available records, and to contact the political parties, which could be a source of information

a, b, c, d....

The original documents produced after a local election process, seem to have the origin not in the Province, but in the Zone Electoral Administration, so at a lower level.

They keep copy of the summary, while the originals are deposited in the Catalonia National Archive.

I will address writen requests to both, because in any case, the authorization must be issued by the Secretary of the Electoral Administration, which will disappear in about 90 days, because their lifecycle is 100 days and the elections to the Parliament took place November the 28th.

Time to run

The long path to the data sources

Since the Department of Adminstració Local couldn't provide me with historical data,  I contacted the President of the Consell Comarcal del Pallars Jussà, Xavier Pont, who commited to contact his party ( CiU), and gave me the phone number of the archives' responsible. Few days later she told me that the Consells Comarcals don't receive the data that I need.

I have contacted the Junta Electoral Central, because it would also be interesting to get the files with the names of elected members of the lists, but they don't store this kind of information, which is created by the Junta Electoral Local. This organism deads 100 days after the elections. The registers produced by the Junta Electoral, containing the details of the counting of votes, are stored by the Audiencia Provincial.

Ok. New options for asking...

A bureaucracy tale

The 15th of November was the date when I went to the Goverment office to ask, officially, for the set of data.

It have registration time: 12:03

Today, Thursday the 18th of November I have called the responsible of the department, to know if the files were already available.

"The form has not yet arrived to my office, following the normal internal process", she said.

Normal means that a paper needs, at least, three days to run ( ! ) from the register office, in the ground level of the building, to an office somewhere in the same building.

Let me take some time to learn about efficiency, high performance and so on

Data ownership, data love, data prevention, data protection

Most of the responsibles to whom I addressed my mails, responded very fast, inviting me to visit their archives, or sending to me pdf's with the information, but one of them informed that the minutes of the offcial meeting were published in the official Journal of the Diputació.

It was following this link that I had to follow the steps of MUNICAT

From there I reached the Servei de Relacions amb les Entitats Locals, wich service manager  told me that they were the owners of the data, and they had historical records, but...

"Do you need all the data ?" she said

Following her request, the 15th of november I had registered an official form asking for the files

Let's wait for some days

to be an investigator

Three days, a long weekend, spent in visiting websites and sending mails to the web administrators, asking for missing information.

Are they going to answer ?

When tomorrow morning they will see my message in their inbox, are they going to react activating the organization in order to send me a quick, well documented answer, or...

Manresa. Well done!

A very good example of maintaining quality information and making it available

When you look at the years were an elections has taken place, there is an mp3 file with the speech of the Major. I advise to listen to the 1979's recorded message.

The minutes of the meetings are hand written

About 1995, summer 95, you can also notice that they move from a typewritting machine to a computer.