Elders’ Council and Communications Office to Coordinate Enrollment Databases and Tribal ID Cards

Members of the Piscataway Conoy Elders’ Council and the Piscataway Communications office are set to begin efforts to consolidate enrollment data into an online computer system, and establish a new, computerized process for the creation of tribal enrollment cards.

In 2009 the Communications Office secured a world-class database system for the tribe to use to house contact information. This system, based on the Salesforce.com platform, can be accessed online anywhere in the world by those with the proper credentials. With the ability for an unlimited number of people to access the same enrollment data, the data consistency issues plaguing the tribe could begin to be addressed. Tribal officials were slow to adopt the system, however, under a crush of work involving incorrectly assigned enrollment and chart numbers, and processing of new enrollments.

As the Elders’ Council has worked diligently to process new enrollment this year, additional problems have been discovered with the tribe’s enrollment data. Much of the problem stems from data being held and utilized by members of both the Elders’ Council and Enrollment Committee in multiple places. Some of the data is contained in a genealogy program on a computer near Indian Head, MD. Other data is held on various paper lists, while other data still is said to be on spreadsheets on flash drives being carried by members of various committees.  Members of the Elders’ Council have complained that the many locations of tribal data is hampering their ability to process new enrollments and assign chart/enrollment numbers to existing enrolled members.

Members of the Elders’ Council approached the Communicatons Office in June requesting training on the Salesforce.com system, which would allow for a permanent consolidation of enrollment data and, for the first time, allow multiple members of the Council to work with the same enrollment data from multiple locations. That training is set to begin at the end of July.

Screenshot of a tribal enrollment record in the Salesforce.com system.

The new system will also be critical to quickly providing reports of tribal data to those who need it. The system has recently been used by the Communications Office to provide a list of tribal members between the ages of 5 – 13, 14- 18, and 19 – 25 to support educational funding in southern Maryland. Reports have also been run to estimate the number of eligible voters in the tribe for the March to 10,000 campaign.

The Communications Office plans to have the Elders’ Council fully trained on the new system by the end of August.

The Elders’ Council has also reviewed a prototype of a new Tribal ID Card provided by the Communications Office. Under a new process, the tribe’s Salesforce.com database would be integrated with FullIdentity.com, eliminating the need to create Tribal ID Cards by hand and maintain equipment to produce them.

One of two enrollment card prototypes printed by the Communications Office.

The cards under review add a number of improvements aimed at preventing fraud and counterfeit. They are made from drivers’ license card stock, include a  number of highly detailed watermarks, and have a distinct holographic overlay. The new cards also feature the tribal logo, as well as identifying information such as the member’s photograph, height, weight, date of birth, sex, and address.

The Communications Office will train the Elder’s Council on the creation of these cards concurrently with their training on the Salesforce.com enrollment database.