Government Relations (GR) professionals often find themselves explaining their day-to-day or defining their occupation generally. When meeting non-GR folks or at family gatherings I’m consistently asked the same question: “What is it that you do again, exactly?”
I’ve even experienced this with colleagues and teams that have worked alongside GR for years.
If you’re explaining, you’re losing — right?
The Importance of Government Relations Teams
For those of us in the trade, the value of government relations is crystal clear, especially as an increasing number of industries and interests find themselves having more interaction with local, state, and federal government entities.
In the midst of the political and legislative uncertainty, government relations departments at the very least:
- Make sense of the nonsense by identifying the most trustworthy and accurate tea leaves for analysis
- Outline the array of legislative possibilities to come and the optimal path(s) that must be navigated to achieve our goal(s)
- Manage the needs and expectations of our allies and partner organizations
- Keep leadership informed and ahead of legislative outcomes, armed with the most accurate and timely information to inform their decisions
I have found one of the most valuable and useful tools to achieve each of these items outlined above is bill tracking software. But not just any bill tracking service will do. Throughout my career so far, I have used just about every tracking service out there, but none have hit the mark like Plural (formerly known as Enview).
Plural for Government Relations Teams
The timely and accurate legislative updates matched with the ease of use with Plural are phenomenal – it’s like using Facebook or Instagram but for bill tracking. Most important for my team are the collaboration capabilities, and the platform’s available options to customize the tool to the needs of our organization.
These two items have been a game changer and added so much value and impact to our work.
When we signed on with Plural, formerly Civic Eagle, in 2019, bill tracking was an occasional pesky task that usually trailed off halfway through session and would rise from the dead at some point after Sine Die when leadership asks where we landed on our priorities.
Thanks to Plural, bill tracking is now a central part of our department’s organizational operation, encompassing collaboration between multiple departments, informing decisions on the allocation of resources, and helping us illustrate the national landscape of state-based legislative sessions with specific examples and hard numbers from the more than 1,000 bills we track each year.
Defining Your Team’s Value with Collaboration and Customization
Of course, nothing in this business proves the value of GR more than outcomes. Plural has allowed us to increase our ability to engage on legislation by multiple folds. When tracking more than 1,000 bills across the country each year, the ability to create custom functions within the platform allowed us to narrow that massive, often overwhelming pile of legislation to just the most viable and impactful bills, allowing us to focus our attention on the pieces of legislation with the most effect and act accordingly.
Plural has without a doubt met our bill tracking needs with ease, providing opportunities for us to robustly engage on legislation across multiple states. However, its collaboration and customization features have really been the game changer, going beyond our expectations and helping us demonstrate our value.
I have seen first-hand how, for most, GR Departments occupy a nebulous space in the legislative process. Being couched between interest groups, trade associations, consultants, lobbyists, legal departments, and lawmakers can muddy the waters even further, leaving GR professionals searching for opportunities, examples and sometimes even the words to define their value. With Plural, that’s a problem of the past — we’re able to cut through the noise with ease and robustly define our value.
Orlando G. Jones, Jr. is the Deputy Director of Government Relations with the Secure Elections Project, dedicated to advancing pro-voter policies at the state level that modernize the voting process and ensure that every American can have their voice heard at the ballot box. A skilled government relations professional with over a decade of experience in various advocacy arenas, Orlando is a former children’s health lobbyist, U.S. Congressional House and committee staffer, and has held positions on successive presidential campaigns. Orlando graduated from Howard University with a BA in History and Philosophy and a JD from NIU College of Law.
