The Mass Defense Committee (MDC) is part of the New York Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The MDC routinely provides legal counseling and representation at protests where there are large numbers of arrests. Normally, they get names when the arrests happen at protests, follow people through the system and then get them representation when their court date arrives. In the past, they recorded most of the data on paper. The Occupy Protests was a challenge for the MDC because of the volumes of arrests being made at protests – their paper based system no longer functioned.
The MDC discussed internally different ways they needed to tackle all the data – and to make sure everyone had proper representation. The initial instinct of the younger members of the MDC was to do an online system, but the older members wanted to stick with paper. Google Docs was initially entertained as a possible solution, but some people were concerned about the privacy of the data, how easy it could be shared, and the need for control over who could see and edit the data. The risk of the data being handed over to the state was too great.
They needed something simple and immediate. They couldn't wait for a system to be built in six months – they needed it now. Eric Goldhagen met with them and looked at the options. Eric was a volunteer, someone who had been represented by the MDC in the past and was happy to give them support, but only had a limited amount of time. Eric helped them see that the issues around privacy and control were more important than the speed of getting it online. He got them to agree to wait a week to see if he could find a solution before they started using google docs.
The tech issue was simple – they needed to record data about arrests, what they were charged with, when and where they were arrested, and when the court date was. From a data perspective it was simple and would work in a spreadsheet, so using a free content management system was a workable solution. Eric went with Drupal because it was the system he was most comfortable with.
The data was simple to set up and he was able to set different content types, one for the people arrested and another for the arrest records, to control who could edit the data.
Drupal views allowed them to set up simple forms and be able to group the data in different ways: they could see all the people arrested at one protest, all the people who would appear at court on the same day and all the people a particular lawyer was responsible for.
The work to get it all set up took about 40 hours with 15 to 20 hours development work. Training was easy, though they had a couple of moments where users got confused; but because they are used to using web-based data, the lawyers took to it really fast.
The Drupal system quickly became the primary tool for the MDC. Everyone who needed access could do so within a week. It became the way that they coordinated the mass defense effort. 1000 arrest records were inputted in the first week. It did take a while to catch up on what they had done, but after it was set up every arrest was recorded in the system and they stopped using paper It's still in use as they continue moving people through the system over a year later.
They've set up 70 user accounts, but primarily there are three people who use the tool – the coordinators of the mass defense committee. One sits in court all day with an ipad and updates information live.
The only downside to using FOSS was that they needed someone with knowledge of FOSS content management systems to set it up for them. If they had gone with a google spreadsheet, the MDC could have done that on its own; but they couldn't have been assured that the data was safe and secure. Eric was also able to provide them with needed server space at a trusted data center with security protocols in place.
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