Mark Pack

The gap between Christmas and the New Year is often a great period to catch up on some of those things you always meant to get round to doing and which will save time and avoid heartache if you do. So each day this week I’ll be giving a tip related to computers and campaigning. The exact details of how you follow each tip will vary depending on your own situation, so if you’re not quite sure what to do by all means pop up a question in the comments.

Today’s tip: back up your data.

I used to share an office with someone who had a cartoon on the wall. It showed two tramps, slumped in an alley. One was saying to the other, “It all started to go wrong when I discovered the backup tape didn’t work”.

Things will go wrong. Data will be mangled or lost. But will you have a backup to save you when it does? And will that backup actually work?

So think about what your key data is and make sure it is being backed up in a way that will survive a mini-disaster. Backing up your EARS data on to a USB drive which is then kept plugged in to the computer won’t be much good in the case of fire or theft. Backups should be physically separate from the devices they are backing up; that way a problem with the device doesn’t kill the backup as well. Then check that your backups really work.

In some cases you can rely on others to do the backups. For example, if you have a website hosted by another company. But are you sure they do backups? Do they backup frequently enough to save you from not just their servers failing but also from you deleting a whole load of content by mistake?

Most likely your key campaigning data will be EARS, member/supporter records, email lists, website and/or blog and personal contact information. Many councillors and PPCs in particular rely on large numbers of phone and email addresses, all stored in the one electronic device with no backup ever made. It’s not a happy sight when it goes wrong, particularly if it’s just before polling day.

So make a new year resolution: start backing up and have a regular cycle so it becomes a habit you don’t have to think about rather than a task you never quite get round to doing.