Romney campaign got its IT from Best Buy, Staples, and friends

[DainBramaged]

Imagine you're launching a company and only have six months to deliver a product. You face a competitor that has been in your industry four years longer than you with twice your staff and twice the budget. If you don't make your deadline, you're out of business.

That, in a nutshell, was the situation facing the technology team for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The Obama for America (OFA) organization had the advantage: it didn't have to wade through the primary season first, allowing OFA's technology team to focus on building an infrastructure. Based on an Ars analysis of the Romney campaign's financial reports, Romney's team had less to work with and passed the lion's share of technology-focused spending directly to advertising companies and telemarketers. This left Team Romney's tech squad with only a fraction of the budget for consulting, services, and infrastructure.

So, the campaign did what a lot of small businesses would do: they went to Best Buy. Or more accurately, they went to Best Buy's subsidiary, MindShift Technologies, a managed service provider that specializes in small and medium business consulting. And when they were in a pinch for tech help, they called Staples' subsidiary ThriveNetworks and a collection of small consulting firms with links to Romney and the Republican Party.

Apparently, that didn't work out so well.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/romney-campaign-got-its-it-from-best-buy-staples-and-friends/


The campaign's own IT operation was lean as well—only one percent of the campaign's overall expenses of $339 million went to supporting internal information technology

[catbyte]

1. Romney has been running for president for 6 years. You'd think SOMEBODY on his staff

would have thought about that. I'm glad they didn't, but Romney had enough cash to at least explore it. It was his own hubris and sense of entitlement that sunk him. Plus he was a cheapskate who didn't want to spend any of his own money, lucky for us.

[panAmerican]

4. Yup; a little something I like to call professional malpractice

I always tell my employers or companies I consult for that I will always give my considered opinion. I don't necessarily expect them to take action, but it's better to have reason to say "I told you so" instead of keeping your mouth shut and watching an operation go down in flames.

[randome]

2. The cool IT people are on Obama's side.

[panAmerican]

3. No way! I thought the title was a joke; smh

[Rain Mcloud]

5. Ha ha ha ha

What,no Radio Shack?

[MineralMan]

7. They got all of their cabling and phones from Radio Shack.

I'm sure.

[MineralMan]

6. It's a lot like some of the businesses for which I've

rewritten their entire websites, working with a very good web designer. The old website was created by some kid who knew some HTML and Java. Badly written, and aimed at an audience in their twenties, those websites simply generated no business. Once the owner figures out that they have a sucky website and hires pros to revamp it, they're always amazed that the new website actually generates business for them.

The Republicans are still hiring their nephews to build their IT systems, and staffing their IT efforts with unpaid volunteers. They're getting exactly what they paid for.

True story: One of the websites we revamped a couple of years ago had all of its main navigation links text in the background color until you moused over them. Only then could you see them at all. Pretty cool, huh? It really kept the home page uncluttered, I guess.

[Retrograde]

8. You're looking at it wrong, IMHO

It was a win-win situation for Romney: if it worked, he might have won the election. If it didn't, those donor dollars (remember he didn't spend his own money on the campaign) went to Bain subsidiaries, in which Romney still has financial interests (why do you think he wouldn't release his tax returns ). It's the same reason his campaign kept running ads in states he was going to win anyway, or had no chance of winning: ClearChannel, which controls a lot of media, is a Bain subsidiary.