Like it or not, the democratic party owns technology compared to republicans today.
The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ.
That said, Democrats do seem more likely to attract and motivate the kind of people you'd need for this. That's a pretty important head start.
The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.
For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Republicans will never again win the White House) and the other obvious alternative for the republicans is the young, well educated people who want and end to marihuana prohibition and less government interference in the lives in general.
Should the republican pivot to take these voters in, then they may very well attract a much larger share of tech people.
As a party they absolutely need to find new issues, stop alienating Latinos, etc. However the national political lights in the party are mostly in Congress, and the vast majority of them are only going to face political challenges from their own right wing, and so have every reason to double down on current Republican policies even though it is not where the party as a whole needs to go.
I don't expect this dynamic to shift until after the Republican brand has so damaged itself that it stops being nationally viable. This will create soul searching, and cause them to pivot. What happens next will depend on how they pivot.
However I do not expect to see a serious discussion within the Republican party about their dilemma until they have pushed themselves to crisis. Which they have not done yet.
The US Republicans need a Clause IV moment.
Narwhal and other OFA DBs may have supplemental information -- as do the "blue" vendors -- but that's separate from the voterfile, and I'm not sure its life-cycle is certain at this point.
Judging from the emails I'm getting, Obama would like to turn it from a campaign advantage to a governing advantage (here are all of my current policy issues, please put pressure on Congress to do X, Y and Z), and if he succeeds in that he will undoubtably try to turn it into a party advantage in the future.
So yes, the organization is fluid and can evaporate. The database of possibly politically active people is much less fluid, and may prove to be a more durable advantage.
One system was diverse and cooperative; the other isolated, secretive, and ultimately a failure.
I'll agree that a GOTV tool is only one part of campaign IT, but I think there's a lesson waiting here.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCA_%28computer_system%29
And they needed it--they've been pretty upfront that for an uncomfortably long time it was not clear the decision to centralize the technology was going to work at all. The field and other outreach teams did not like or use the products that the tech built for them for months.