How Technology Can Help Your Post-Pandemic Government Affairs Strategy

It has never been more important for you to stay on top of the policy issues that matter most to your organization. Yet, issues are increasingly complicated and teams are increasingly smaller. In our 2021 State of Public Affairs Industry Report, more than 80 percent of our respondents work on teams with less than 10 colleagues, and 48 percent work on teams with three

or less. In fact, small teams are the number one challenge government affairs professionals face, followed by the volume of issues they need to monitor, according to our report.

If you’re tired of going from website to website manually looking for updates on evolving bills or rules, locating the most up-to-date talking points, and filling out endless spreadsheets when you could be executing on work that needs to be done and connecting with those key lawmakers and stakeholders, we’ve got good news!

Government affairs and policy professionals spend approximately 27 hours per week searching for policy updates, finding relevant news from credible sources, managing stakeholder meetings, and reporting on their efforts. But leveraging technology can dramatically cut that time to approximately 12 hours per week. Here’s how:

1. Find and monitor legislation and regulations

Government affairs professionals spend on average 10 hours per week finding and tracking the relevant policy. FiscalNote’s comprehensive data allows you to quickly monitor and track legislation and regulation at the U.S. state, federal, and global levels. With custom alerts, you’ll get a heads up on all the policy developments you care about as soon as something happens. By using technology the time spent per week can be cut down more than half to approximately four hours. Here’s how:

U.S. Federal: Access congressional legislative information, including bills, committees, hearings, CRS reports, voting records, and more. Find historical bills from an archive of over 28 years of legislative data and identify differences across bill versions. Monitor federal regulatory data from over 130 agencies, with access to dockets, rules, notices, presidential documents, OIRA reviews, Public Inspection Desk, and public comment submissions.

U.S. State: Monitor legislative and regulatory information from all 50 states and D.C., including bills, rules, research reports, committees, hearings, executive orders, motions, voting records, and more. Access FiscalNote’s powerful search function with an archive of 20 years of legislative data and over 1.4 million bills. 

Local: Tracking ordinances for thousands of municipalities can be a challenge. Our local monitoring services enable you to easily track local laws, resolutions, speeches, hearings, and more for any city or county with a population of over 50,000. 

Global: Tap into the largest set of legislative and regulatory data from over 20 countries around the world. Discover policy documentation, contact information, and trends in national governments. Prioritize and coordinate messaging, documents, and tasks on issues across your global offices.

2. Stay on top of the latest news and developments on your issues

Finding the latest news and analysis on the myriad of issues and legislation your organization cares about can be time-consuming. CQ Roll Call’s team of veteran reporters provides you with award-winning, non-partisan coverage on the policy, politics, people, and personalities of Capitol Hill driving the most pressing conversations around your issues. 

Cut through the noise and get alerted when new intel or analysis is available, automatically bringing you context on the latest policy developments you care about. CQ Federal also brings you complete coverage of all schedules, so you always know where you need to be and when debates and votes will happen.

3. Manage meetings with key stakeholders

FiscalNote’s platform makes it easy to manage the most influential stakeholders on your biggest issues. From approximately six hours per week, this task can be reduced to about two and a half hours per week using technology. Build a network of relationships that can open the right doors at the right time by gaining access to the largest set of elected official data available on the market, with information on over 100,000+ lawmakers and their high-level staff.

Our stakeholder profiles include all relevant information around each individual, making it easy for you to engage and associate them with their positions on key issues. Take it a step further by recording and storing all interactions, events, and meetings in one place. Be more productive by associating actions and notes to every contact.

4. Align your teams

Getting everyone across the organization on the same page can be a bear. Save time by prioritizing and coordinating messaging, documents, and tasks on key issues with FiscalNote’s centralized workspaces. Create a single repository composed of relevant policy developments, talking points, influential stakeholders, important documents, and more. Increase connectivity across cross-functional teams, reduce email traffic, and build a database of institutional knowledge all in two hours or less per week.

5. Mobilize your supporters to act

Mobilizing your advocates — whether those are your employees, supporters, or board members — can be crucial to getting your voice heard in the constituencies that matter and get the critical mass needed to sway certain legislative and regulatory decisions. FiscalNote’s flagship advocacy tool VoterVoice helps mobilize your supporters to act from the comfort of their own home, using the platform of their liking — be it email, social media, phone, text.

From scheduling and personalizing messages to your advocates and quickly setting up campaigns, to having real-time data to optimize as you go, VoterVoice provides all the digital advocacy tools you need to raise awareness, mobilize your advocates, and effect change on your policy priorities.

6. Report on your work

A big part of your job is putting together informed, up-to-date briefings or reports that are likely to get shared around your organization. Now, more than ever, you need to prove that the work you and your team accomplish is essential to your company.

Our recent State of Public Affairs Survey found that 57 percent of you have to create reports or briefs for internal stakeholders on a weekly or monthly basis, taking up a large chunk of your already busy schedule.

With our dynamic reporting tools, you can instantly create shareable, visual reports providing an at-a-glance view into the policy you’re monitoring, your relationships with key players from legislators to committees to organizational contacts, and your team’s latest activity. Visualize your engagements with your most important stakeholders, measure your influence over key pieces of legislation or regulation, and holistically understand the impact of key working relationships and actions with our enhanced reports.