In order to effectively engage with the policymaking process, especially at the state level, policy professionals, organizers, and lobbyists need a legislative tracking system that ensures they are well-informed and always up-to-date. The main source of legislative data is, of course, the legislatures themselves. Legislative information offices make physical copies of important materials accessible in-person; however, most tracking systems source their data from the legislature’s website, which is typically outdated, slow and unintuitive.
Many policy professionals rely on manual processes to ingest basic bill info into a series of spreadsheets, word documents, calendars, and agendas. This can turn into a time and resource burden during the legislative session, when policy teams are already spread thin.
It is, however, becoming increasingly popular for professionals in the advocacy space to abandon these spreadsheets for a more efficient and intuitive software solution. Read on to see why, when it comes to software vs. spreadsheets for legislative tracking, there is clear momentum towards using software.
The Importance of Legislative Tracking
Whether you are a small contract lobbying shop, a national chapter-based advocacy organization, or a government affairs team at a corporation, legislative tracking is a core function of your work. Effective advocacy on behalf of your organization cannot be done without reliable data, and legislative tracking ensures that you constantly have the data you need. At its core, effective legislative tracking involves three key components:
- Top-of-funnel filter – Even if you’re only active in one state, you will likely see 2,000+ pieces of legislation introduced during a legislative session. A top-of-funnel filter must quickly parse this list of bills and identify the legislation that matters to your organization.
- Timely Tracking – Once you have identified the legislation you need to be aware of, it is important to always be aware of where that legislation is in the legislative process, and quickly be updated when there are signs of movement.
- Shareability – No policy work takes place in a vacuum, and you will need to share your work with colleagues, leadership, advocates, and partners. An effective legislative tracking tool makes communicating organization stances, legislative activity, and your impact on policymaking much easier.
Why Not Spreadsheets?
I have built a few legislative tracking spreadsheets in my day, mostly using Google Sheets or desktop software like Excel. I found those spreadsheets to be effective and deliver value for the organizations I built them for, but I also learned that the effort that is required to build and maintain reliable legislative tracking spreadsheets is costly, and that effort could be better utilized to fulfill other responsibilities of a busy policy role.
Tracking policy in this way is inherently manual and opens the door to human error, including missing, inaccurate, or delayed information, which could have significant impacts on your advocacy efforts during a legislative session.
Additionally, as policy professionals, our expertise is in analysis and communication, not in building complex data visualizations. A good legislative tracking system does not need to be beautiful, but it should be intuitive, easily shareable, and always up-to-date. Abandoning spreadsheets for intelligent software solutions has become a popular choice to achieve these goals with greater ease.
The Case for a Software Solution
Moving to a software solution for your legislative tracking allows you to vastly reduce the amount of time your team spends ingesting data, and to reallocate that time towards more efficient advocacy.
See below for a comparison of spreadsheets vs. a software solution, such as Plural, for your legislative tracking needs.
Legislative Tracking with Plural
Not all software solutions are created equally. Plural is an all-in-one platform with strong user reviews. Our legislative tracking software was built and is continually advanced with the needs of the advocacy community in mind. Plural grants you all of the benefits of software solutions described above, along with mobile access, artificial intelligence-driven insights, and nationwide coverage to give you consistency across tracking all jurisdictions in a central location.
Intuitive Searching
- Plural’s powerful search tools will be your efficient top-of-funnel filter. Whether you are proactively looking for legislation based on keywords, committee referrals, or sponsors, you will find that you can quickly build a list of bills that matter to you. Additionally, you can save searches to continually run so that, once a bill matches your selected criteria, it is automatically included in your results.
Intelligent Legislative Alerts
- Our team has more than a decade of experience with scraping legislative data from state websites, so you can be sure you’re receiving the most accurate data, as quickly as possible. Not only will the up-to-date data you care about always be accessible to you and your team, but our system will also send you alerts about updates to legislation you are tracking. With Plural, you’ll be the first to know about the things that matter: upcoming committee hearings,new amendments, and more.
Team Collaboration
- We take collaboration seriously at Plural. So seriously that, unlike other software solutions, we offer unlimited seats for your colleagues and collaborators. We are passionate about building features, like the ability to mention a teammate in a comment on a bill, that encourage as many of your partners to use the tool as possible.
In addition to providing a more effective approach to legislative tracking, Plural has legislator and committee pages, an engaging UI, and more features that will upgrade your approach to policy.
Experience the Power of Plural
Move beyond clunky spreadsheets and expensive legacy tools and unlock advanced searching, intelligent tracking, and seamless collaboration with Plural.
