Keeping track of local policy issues and ordinances as they make their way from idea to law at the municipal government level can be a nightmare without the right tools.
With municipal governments serving populations from a few thousand to millions, there’s a huge range of levels of sophistication between municipal governments. Most government affairs professionals deal with multiple cities and counties, so staying organized requires the help of political monitoring software.
Dedicated software tools for government relations and political monitoring are a relatively new innovation, with most products popping up in the last decade.
Most of the large players in the field started at the federal and state level, and have then expanded to cover municipalities, but are still best known for their capabilities at the state and federal level.
Curate was created precisely because of this void in local tracking.
With thousands more cities and counties in the country than states, we saw a dire need to make the life of a local government relations or public affairs professional easier.
But we recognize that many issues that start at the local level bubble up to become state or federal legislation.
Many of our customers benefit from using Curate in tandem with one of the state and federal tracking services, so we’ve put together a breakdown of how Curate compares to the top political monitoring services that provide local tracking.
Curate
Overview
Curate was founded in 2016 by a former construction project manager and a computer scientist to make local government data accessible to businesses.
The venture-backed startup provides AI-powered local issue and local ordinance tracking in towns, cities and counties all over the country.
Approach to data collection
Curate’s software constantly visits municipal government websites to download the agendas and minutes of councils, committees, task forces, and boards.
If a governing body of any size publishes its agendas online, Curate collects them. Then, using proprietary machine learning models, Curate sifts through the millions of documents it downloads to identify the relevant mentions of customers’ chosen topics, which could include advocacy priorities, company names, or legislative items.
Known for
Curate is best known for local tracking.
It’s the only platform that was designed for local first, and its highly customizable searches help clients find out about trending local issues, fee changes, regulation updates, and proposed ordinances that pose a threat to their business or provide an opportunity.
Another distinguishing feature of Curate is the ability to click through all of the mentions of a topic in context within a particular document, even if the document that the municipality posts is not in a searchable text format.
Curate's proprietary optical character recognition technology gives users the ability to search through documents that were uploaded from a scan or photo, which is a common practice at many small municipalities.
Local issue tracking
Curate has the most comprehensive local database of the four services in this analysis, covering more than 12,000 municipalities and counties across the country. In most states, this includes every city down to 2,000 residents, and in some more rural states, Curate even tracks cities with only 1,000 residents.
Alert frequency
Curate customers can choose the report schedule that works for them. Most customers choose weekly because that keeps them up-to-date on city meetings, but customers can get reports as frequently as daily.
Mobile App?
Curate does not have an app, but the website is built mobile-first so the site is accessible regardless of the screen size.
Quorum
Overview
Quorum is a massive software platform with a wide range of features for government advocacy work that was founded in 2014.
The self-funded company provides real-time alerts about policy developments at the state and federal level by tracking legislation, social media, and dialogue across Congress and all 50 states, as well as a variety of automation tools to help teams collaborate on their lobbying efforts.
Approach to data collection
Quorum uses web-scraping technology to automatically scan political websites, social media accounts for politicians and government agencies, and minutes and agendas from government meetings to help lobbyists know what issues are currently on the table at any level of government.
Known for
Possibly the most exciting feature Quorum offers is the ability to instantaneously respond to issues that are buzzing.
When an alert comes in, customers can immediately address the issue by sending out an email or tweet from inside the platform to hundreds or thousands of elected officials and/or federal employees who have some connection to the issue.
Local issue tracking
Customers can track agendas and minutes for council, committee, and board meetings across the top 200 largest cities and 200 largest counties by population in the country.
Quorum’s software also checks elected officials’ social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to notify customers when officials mention their keywords.
Alert frequency
Real-time alerts are available when issues get added to agendas.
Mobile app?
Quorum has an app for Android and iOS.
MultiState
Overview
Moving away from the lobbying software realm, MultiState has been helping clients track and influence policy at the municipal, state, and federal level since 1984.
MultiState built a network of state and local lobbyists across the country, and they leverage this team of experts to help clients stay abreast of legislative issues and policy change.
Approach to data collection
At the state and local level, MultiState assigns a dedicated policy expert to each client, who serves as an extension of the client’s team. The expert reads bills and regulations and files them into a customizable online tracking platform for the client.
Known for
MultiState is known for its done-for-you approach to lobbying. One of its coolest features is its automated lobbying compliance reporting for every state.
Local issue tracking
MultiState’s experts monitor more than 4,300 local jurisdictions—typically covering cities and counties with populations over 20,000. When the expert identifies a proposed ordinance or local action that matters to a client, they add it to the client portal.
Alert frequency
Alerts arrive as soon as the expert identifies them and adds them to the client portal.
Mobile app?
MultiState does not have an app.
Agenda Discovery
Approach to data collection
The Agenda Discovery software scans agendas from local government websites and looks for relevant keywords.
Known for
Agenda Discovery is known for focusing on local government agenda documents.
Local issue tracking
When the software finds an agenda that contains keywords you choose to monitor, the system emails you with a downloadable agenda to your inbox. But it does not take into account context. It will return results for any and all matches of your keyword.
The Agenda Discovery platform scans 2,197 local munis for 8,515 phrases with alerting.
Alert frequency
Alerts arrive as soon as the expert identifies them and adds them to the client portal.
Mobile app?
MultiState does not have an app.
FiscalNote
Overview
Founded in 2013, FiscalNote was designed to help government affairs professionals keep track of legislation as it moves through state and federal government.
The well-funded startup now has a team of more than 500 and uses a combination of manpower and artificial intelligence to provide data to its clients around the world. It is on track to consolidate a good chunk of the government analytics industry through acquisition.
Local issue tracking
In August of 2021 FiscalNote acquired Curate. The municipal issue tracking capabilities of Curate, are now part of FiscalNote's powerful software suite designed to provide customers with the information they need to navigate the policy environment.
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