As government affairs professionals, you aren’t necessarily performing the task of your stakeholders or live their day-to-day life. The relationships you build with them are very valuable when identifying emerging issues and prioritizing what to track.
“Make sure you have at least one person that you can contact on the fly to get feedback,” says Guenther. “Run things off of them, like, ‘I think this is an issue; do you agree, do you not, how could this you know come into play?’ just to get a better sense and be able to see not just micro-targeting but also look at the macro, the entire sphere of what's going on to better understand where you fit in the puzzle.”
2. Identify Your Keywords
Once you’ve heard from your stakeholders and identified the issues you need to track, the next step is building a list of keywords related to all those issues.
“When we switched over to FiscalNote, we had come up with a list of keywords that we needed to stay on top of — general topics or issues. This is based on things we've previously dealt with, things in the news, things that we felt were going to be coming up in the future, and just develop keyword searches to be able to try and pull that information together,” says Guenther.
She recommends fine-tuning your search terms looking to achieve a balance between hyperfocused and general terms. “You don't want to go too narrow because you might miss something but if you go too broad, then you're going to end up overwhelmed with information,” she says. Then, let the alerts come to you via email whenever something related to those keywords pops up.
3. Organize and Categorize
Guenther recommends organizing your keywords by issue and also by importance. Once the alerts start coming in, you’ll be able to determine if it’s something you need to take immediate action on or if it’s an update you have to monitor. A state legislation tracker will allow you to create labels and categories where you can organize and categorize your issues and updates on the legislation you’re tracking.
“It's a hierarchy system you want to try and create. You have your overarching topic, which would be your issue folder, and then we definitely use the labels function in FiscalNote, which is great, and that sort of breaks it down … and then I can report and be able to say ‘ok, we had so many e-prescribing bills introduced, etc.,” she says. “If you're consistent with the way that you organize your information, consistent with the way you tag it or label it, then it's just going to make your life so much easier when it comes time for reporting trying to find like a specific piece of information that you're looking for.”
4. Take Note of Important Dates on Each State
While state legislatures operate following roughly similar guidelines, no legislature is alike. There are state-by-state nuances and variations in how they carry their legislative sessions; for example, most states allow pre-filing but the dates when you can pre-file vary widely between states. Also, a majority of states start their sessions in January but not all and the convene and adjourn dates also differ.
Make sure you have a state legislative sessions calendar handy and highlight the important dates for your strategy. Remember that every state has its own dates for when they convene and adjourn, and these dates are subject to change.
5. Stay One Step Ahead
Because of the fast pace at state legislatures, you can’t afford to take a break. Take the “quiet times” to prepare your strategy and get ahead of upcoming discussions so that when sessions start, you can focus on getting your issues past the finish line faster.
“You really need to think about what issues you might be facing, what crises may pop up, and try to get the legwork done during the quiet times because when the issue is actually introduced or brought before the legislature, you probably won't have time to do all of that work,” Guenther says. “You constantly have to be thinking ahead.”
6. Widen Your Focus and Align Your Issues
It's important to track your own issues, but it's also important to track what else is going on in your particular legislator and even in surrounding states. You’ll want to start identifying media sources that cover your issues immediately. Look to state and local newspapers, blogs, wire services, and television outlets first. Then, look for specialty publications, both in the state and nationwide. See if interest groups — both supporters and opponents — are following the bill and have released analysis.
“Knowing what the priorities of the legislature are and what the state is talking about influences what legislation will ultimately be enacted and thus the likelihood of your issues having legs that year or not,” says Guenther. “You definitely want to try to align your issues with whatever is in the news where you can without seeming too theatrical.”
When tracking state legislation, Guenther relies on FiscalNote State and our keyword discovery tool but she even recommends going one step further to stay on top of everything that’s happening beyond the traditional realm of oral and maxillofacial surgeons.