The Obama For America 2012 (OFA) campaign’s digital efforts, specifically a voter data analysis program codenamed Narwhal, were widely praised for helping the President secure re-election last fall.
But now, three months after the vote was cast, The Verge reports on the dispute between the programmers behind the OFA’s digital tools, who want to open their code up to the wider developer community, and officials at the Democratic National Committee, who want to keep it locked away from public access, preserving what they believe to be an advantage over Republicans (The Romney campaign’s rival “Orca” digital platform was reported to have flopped at the worst possible time).
In fact, some developers worry that the DNC could move to “mothball,” or stow-away the OFA digital code until the next election cycle, which some developers believe will come back to bite the DNC, preventing helpful iteration and development. The DNC, for its part, told The Verge “OFA is still working out the future of their tech and data infrastructure so any speculation at this time is premature and uninformed.” Read the full story at The Verge.
