GDPR and Irish politics.

The phrase "bespoke database" sounds rather odd. Perhaps it means that it is not like a Wordpress or Joomla database which has a standard schema (structure) that does not vary from installation to installation. The report is quite mild and finds fault with other parties too. The fact that there were no sanctions or fines must be really upsetting for FG and its supporters in the media. Whatever credibility those FG supporters in the media had is damaged by the findings in the report which just amounted to a set of recommendations to make things compliant with GDPR.

Regards...jmcc

Broadly yes, but they have to tell people that they're recording their data, have a proper DPO with a proper privacy policy setting out their retention of data, and give people to right to have their data updated or deleted.

Were those the printed booklets confidential to members instructing them to scour social media for evidence of voter intentions and to secretly gather the information?

The Report expressly said that it found no evidence of SF telling the public that they were collecting information on them.

More than that. They will have to proactively draw voters attention. So the next time a Sinn Fein canvasser calls to your door, just like you get the data protection warning when you ring a bank or other service, they will have to begin the conversation by telling the voter that they will be recording information in the Abu database. If they don't do that, and they record information, they will be in breach of Data Protection.

To explain it in simple terms, Wordpress and Joomla are database backed content management systems. They store the content data in databases and dynamically generate webpages using this stored data. The user can update the data without ever having to understand much about databases, PHP or plug-ins. They typically use MySQL/Mariadb as the database software. The database schema is tweakable but most Wordpress and Joomla installations just use their respective default schema (database structure) when installed.

The phrase "bespoke database" is rather quaint and seems to be aimed at a non-technical audience and allows them, much like reading the "technology" section of a newspaper, to think that they understand database matters.

In terms of complexity, the Irish electoral register is not a major problem. It is already quite structured and the database schema would be relatively simple for such a small dataset. The main problems would be in what database professionals refer to as the ETL phase. This is where the data from the register is extracted, transformed into a standardised format, and loaded into the database. Even the address data could, to some extent, be correlated with the Eircode for addresses to reduce errors. But these are the kinds of things that database professionals, rather than web developers, deal with and think about.

What SF did with its Abu database wasn't complex and it is the kind of thing that has been commonplace in politics outside of Ireland for decades. The Irish political parties had generally been well behind the curve. SF had just been more professional in its approach. It made FF/FG look stupid and incompetent. This naturally upset FF/FG and its supporters. It was obvious that FF/FG's friends in the media would be used to make a big thing about this but it really just landed all the political parties, including FF/FG , in the crap and and resulted in no sanctions or fines. FG is still the third largest party in the Dail behind FF and SF.

SF is both the most popular party in the opinion polls and technically the largest party in the Dail. The political hit pieces in the Dublin media obviously did not have quite the effects that FF/FG supporters expected.

I have to admit that I found the foam flecked ranting about databases and hosting by one of FG's schoolteacher/senators quite funny especially when it turned out that FG was using the same web hosting company as SF. :)

Regards...jmcc

Exactly, and if they don't do that each and every time, there will be plenty of complaints. Easy to predict.

Public backlash? A few outraged Sindo/Indo FG supporters and the Ballymagash UDC FG members seemed upset but most people didn't really give a damn as things like Covid and real life had higher priorities.

Regards...jmcc