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RE Companies and Technology 2 pgs. [Subject: Domestic Policy] [Report], no date
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RE Companies and Technology 2 pgs. [Subject: Domestic Policy] [Report], no date
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Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
Contested Materials Collection
Folder List
Box Number
Folder Number
Document Date
No Date
Subject
Document Type
Document Description
53
22
Domestic Policy
Report
RE Companies and Technology 2pg
Monday, June 18, 2012
Page 1 of 1
DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD [NIXON PROJECT]
DOCUMENT
DOCUMENT
NUMBER
TYPE
SUBJECT/TITLE OR CORRESPONDENTS
DATE
RESTRICTION
N-1
memo
Marik to Haldeman re: The Future
[DOC#13]
of the Data Base" (PP.28.29)
2/20/73
C(Nixon)
FILE GROUP TITLE
BOX NUMBER
STAFF SECRETARY
92
FOLDER TITLE
Computer Data Base
RESTRICTION CODES
A. Release would violate a Federal statute or Agency Policy.
E. Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or
B. National security classified information.
financial information.
C. Pending or approved claim that release would violate an individual's
F. Release would disclose investigatory information compiled for law
rights.
enforcement purposes.
D. Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy
G. Withdrawn and return private and personal material.
or a libel of a living person.
H. Withdrawn and returned non-historical material.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NA FORM 1421 (4-85)
Presidential Materials Review Board
Review on Contested Documents
Collection:
Staff Secretary
Box Number:
92
Folder:
Computer Data Base
Document
Disposition
13
Return Private/Political
[Ilem
28
The performance of each vendor is appraised:
CompuGraphics is headed by Terry McCarthy and has close ties with the
Cuyahoga County Republican organization through William Bennett. This firm
maintains the Cuyahoga County Voter Lists. This firm performed very poorly
and should not be considered for any future business. They underestimated
the jobs and did not have the technical management talent to accomplish
the tasks. One of the Committee's staff was sent to Cleveland to direct
the project.
C.. Howard Wilson Company is headed by C. Howard Wilson. This company also
did a very poor job. Data was in many cases 30 or more days late. Failure
to check outputs for correct precinct structure in California caused numerous
re-runs, cost the Committee more than $10,000 and delayed delivery of a usable
product more than four weeks in some areas. Technical management was poor.
Mr. Wilson left the project to attend to other business. Numerous counties
had to be. removed from Wilson and given to other vendors because of his
poor performance. One of the Committee's staff was sent to California to
direct the project.
Although Premier Printing and Mailing had responsibility for only one county,
Harris County, they were unable to perform the job and the county was sent to
another vendor for conversion. This firm is operating in the dark ages of
automation and should not be considered for any work of this type.
Ed Nichols Associates is headed by Edward Nichols and performed creditably
for the Committee. Most of the work which was taken from other vendors was
sent to Nichols. As the volume of work increased, the quality of the out-
put went down. Nichols was not sufficiently staffed to handle the greater
volumes. Second, Nichols made certain promises to Pennsylvania Republicans
to allow them access to the data in exchange for their cooperation in ob-
taining the source data. This was done without Committee approval and against
his specific instructions.
A.R.A.P. converted the data for New Jersey and wrote the Committee's edit
programs. They subcontracted all programming and computer work to Automated
Data Research (ADR), also of Princeton. The A.R.A.P. group was headed by
Evan Gray and the ADR programmer was Robert Wickendon. Because A.R.A.P.
subcontracted all programming, it is difficult to assess that aspect. However,
the technical management at A.R.A.P. was not good. Wickendon was the only
person who understood their software. After the last shipment, Wickendon
left for a prolonged vacation and no one was available for more than
two weeks to correct several problems that developed in their last shipment.
29
Cambridge Opinion Studies converted voter data for Connecticut. The project
was headed by Richard Hochhauser. All the work was from hard copy source
data. A major error was made in the position of the telephone number, which
caused only the first six digits to be shown on manuscripts. Cambridge
regenerated these lists for each one affected.
Cohasset Associates is headed by Bob Williams. All work was done on a
subcontract basis. Work was delivered on time. The only complaint is that
Williams does not stand behind his work. When errors were detected in pre-
cincting the data, causing a re-run, Williams originally agreed to cover
the cost of correcting the error and regenerating the manuscript. He later
reneged on this agreement.
One other vendor was used during the primary -- Compass Systems of San Diego,
California. Compass was contracted to convert California data for the
primary election. Tom Hoefeller was Project Manager. The firm did a very
poor job -- delivering data for only 20 of the 31 counties required.
In summary, no firm which converted voter registration data did an out-
standing job. Some, such as CompuGraphics, Wilson and Premier, did extremely
poor jobs and should not be used in the future. Others, such as Nichols,
Cohasset, A.R.A.P. and Cambridge did average jobs. In choosing any firm,
three criteria must be weighed: technical experience, sufficient manpower
and political backing. The greatest single fault'with all of the firms
with which we dealt was lack of technical management and lack of sufficient
resources to do the job. It appears that the companies with political ex-
perience in data processing are so small that they lack the means to do
the job properly. Similarly, the larger firms, such as UCC, do not have the
political experience to handle the jobs.
DATA EDIT AND STANDARDIZATION
A standard computer edit program was developed and supplied to each of the
state vendors and to UCC. The purpose of this program was to validate the
data in the original county files prior to submission to UCC. The edit was
designed to be run as a final processing step by the state vendors after
all data had been converted into the standard format. It was also to be
run by UCC to validate that the correct data has been submitted by the state
vendor. The edit program was designed to validate input data, not correct
errors. Thus, it was designed to display real or potential problems for
manual checking rather than attempting to correct them.
The edit routine consisted of the following:
1. A set of error-checking sub-routines