SNA people

I'm facing the responsibility of creating a new acronym

SNA stands for "Say NO, attitude", and it refers to the people not loving what they do.

Ugly people, in general, because their emotional attitude is physiologically replicated. They are punished living their lives.

I have a nice white list, but also a long black list of SNA's. The good thing is that they are a multitude, but they don't succeed to turn the world in black

Who is the Devil of the offical documents?

The answer is: The Secretary of the Municipality

This is an official position occupied by lawyers, responsible for the legal quality of the agreements and decissions issued by the Municipality.


But.... what I'm noticing, reading the documents that they send to the official gazzette, is that the level of creativity is very ( too ) high, in the sense that the same protocol ( i.e.: the entitlement of the elected members to replace the Major when being absent ), becomes a possibility for creating mess:

- If one decides to define the substitute number 1, 2, 3.., the other assigns the substitute number 1, while numbers 2 and 3 are names, simply "substitutes"

- If one defines the areas of responsibility, and later assigns an elected members to each area, the other prefers to assign persons to the areas, and only then give the details about the content of the area.


There is no a single act that can be compared from one Municipality to another one.

But, I'm afraid that the worst is still to come:

This morning I have been in the library of the historical archive, searching the remaining information of 1995, and starting to work 1991. The structure of the public documents, is different again, with a rather complicated structure.

(I'm doing it only for pleasure, not for fun, but I can adapt my goals if necessary !!)

The work load for the comming months. A boring tale

I already have 1021 records in an EXCEL sheet.

This is covering three elections ( 1999, 2003 and 2007 ) for 21 cities.

Taking into consideration that I need data for 130 cities, related to a total of 8 elections, I can expect the work to be finalized when reaching the level of 16.000 records.

Can you believe it?
One by one....

The steps are the following for the last three elections, which information is on-line:

1- Read the session after the election, where the Major of the city entitles to some elected to become responsibles for a certain area ( Health, Sports, Economy.. )
Write the name of the elected in the spreadsheet, male o female, and area of responsibility
2- Read the electoral list, published some weeks before the election, to know the party to which each candidate belongs.


When the document is not on-line I must visit the Historical Archive of the offical gazzette, in Barcelona, opening hours from 10 till 14 . I must read each single page, scanning for the cities and documents that I need.  To cover the maximum possibilities of getting such information, I use to read four months of the archived documents, In total I expect to invest from 6 to 10 complete days

People updating their family names

Currently I'm working with the records relating the villages smaller than 250 inhabitants, from 1987 till 2007

My first hard work is to verify the 6.600 records in order to guarantee that the names can be recognized, in the sense that Mr. Joaquin ( In Spanish ) Tortades, is the same candidate than Mr Joaquim ( In Catalan ) Tortades, and also the same than Mr Quim ( Familiar form of the name in Catalan ) Tortades.

This is needed to be able to follow their political career along the time, specially if they have been changing from a party to another, or to others in general.

The names have been manually digitalized, and there is a high number of typing errors, which makes standarization to be a huge work

and the winner is...

This is a post coincident with the Oscar awards, so the title is the best one.

As expected ( ! ), currently, all the available records at the Ministery, are properly stored in my pc.

It has not been easy. It has taken a lot of time, emails and phone calls to get their attention in order to spend a little bit of their time ( public servants ) to cooperate with me.

The problem is moving to another field. They can't provide me with the details of the municipalities of more than 250 inhabitants, and less than 100.000, so 80% is not available.

Yesterday I spent 4 hours in the library of the Province Official Gazzette ( BOP ) of Barcelona, surfing through the June-October books of the year 1995.

My average speed was 20 municipalities per hour. The problem is that they can publish their decisions about government structure along four months, without an official publication date.

It means that I have to read,  day by day, searching for the needed document.

I need information about 80 cities, in 5 electoral contests, giving a result of 400 documents for which I don't know the publication day

If the average speed remains 20 per hour, I will need 20 hours. If the Library opens 4 hours a day, in 5-7 days should be ready

Meanwhile I will start to work with the documents downloaded from the on-line registers and the ones recorded yesterday, to guarantee that this is a workable stuff

It seems that collecting data will be the core of the investigation

The Gollum of information

When the administration makes data available to the world through a website, and somewhere in the website they offer: for ad-hoc files, please contact..., what I would never expect is to have to wait 7 days for a  negative answer.

The database has been built up with public information ( elections ) paid with public funds. How can they consider themselves as the owners of the information ?

Is it possible that they have never heard about the society of knowledge and sharing information?

This becomes a personal war. I will be the winner. Their only option is When, but they still don't know it.

Information is preciousss, is mineeee....

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