Responsibilities of the Constituency EARS Officer
The EARS officer's prime responsibility is to ensure that the data held in the EARS database is trustworthy by:
- making sure that the electoral roll is up-to-date (using the correct annual register and adding rolling-register updates)
- coordinating EARS across the constituency, installing the latest EARS version on all computers and regularly copying Ward data back to a central copy
- installing EARS on new computers as necessary using the annual program disk and a back-up of the appropriate centrally held data
- ensuring field names & tags are consistent across the constituency (enforcing this with password control if necessary)
- checking telephone numbers in EARS against the national Telephone Preference Service lists before telephone canvassing
- after polling day, transferring all Ward data to the Constituency computer, then archiving to correctly named past election fields and redistributing to the Ward/Division computers
The EARS officer is also responsible for:
- liaison with the EARS office in Purley and for ensuring that all invoices for annual maintenance etc. are paid
- the annual task of carrying out the merge process to transfer previous years' data onto new electoral register at the start of the year. This merged data should then be distributed to the Ward/Divisional computers
- ensuring that regular backups are made of data held centrally and on Ward computers and that the backups are held securely
- ensuring that the EARS activities of the local party comply with the Data Protection Act by restricting use of EARS to political campaigning activities only
- advising and assisting with any computer problems relating to the use of EARS on Ward/Divisional computers
- supporting Ward or Division EARS officers and organising suitable training of volunteers in the use of EARS