How the Chamber of Digital Commerce Monitors Blockchain Policy Using FiscalNote

As the world’s leading trade association representing the digital asset and blockchain industry, the Chamber of Digital Commerce has over 200 member companies interested in the evolving and highly complex blockchain space. However, their industry is experiencing unique growing pains as the technology continues to develop at an accelerating pace.

“Blockchain is still pretty nascent, and our mission is to educate policymakers and the broader community on the importance of this revolutionary technology,” says Divij Pandya, associate director of policy at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. “We track a broad range of policy issues that range from the use of digital tokens to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing to tax policy. We’re very active on Capitol Hill.”

As part of a small policy team, Divij needs to keep up with how quickly the blockchain industry can change overnight depending on government action. Keeping track of hundreds of bills each year is a cumbersome process that underscores the need for a one-stop-shop approach. Instead of going to different software solutions and trying to manually bring them all together in one place, the Chamber’s policy team needs a way to quickly find and act on legislation and then educate their members and policymakers without the fear of missing anything.

Tracking Legislation All in One Place and Managing Fly-Ins

Using FiscalNote, the Chamber of Digital Commerce has been able to consolidate many different processes into one for seamless policy issue management and legislative monitoring. Additionally, the Chamber sees an opportunity to also grow its list of supporters who are friendly to the oftentimes complex and overwhelming technology space.

FiscalNote came in handy when the Chamber had to manage their most recent fly-in to educate lawmakers around the importance of blockchain technology. According to Divij, during Congressional Blockchain Education Day, his team used FiscalNote to “organize staff contacts and create talking points for the Chamber’s membership. [They] used FiscalNote to identify points of contact in each office, in part based on the staff directory maintained in FiscalNote.” Fly-ins are, by nature, an incredibly hectic time for organizations; having the peace of mind to be able to know who to talk to made all the difference for the Chamber.

FiscalNote helped the Chamber by organizing previous notes and talking points all in one place.

“With FiscalNote, we’re constantly tracking legislation. So, for our fly-in, having the ability to export everything, collaborate with, and notify our teams and our members was incredibly important,” adds Divij.

Keeping Members Informed

Beyond educating lawmakers, one of the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s core functions is also educating the public. To this end, the Chamber leverages FiscalNote to send out a weekly newsletter to their members with the most pressing legislative and regulatory updates, and upcoming challenges in the blockchain space.

“The legislative information you see in that newsletter is from our work using FiscalNote,” says Divij. Updating their members on the issues has never been easier. “In comparison to other services, we took trials and demos with a lot of products, but we kept coming back to FiscalNote every time,” he adds.

A “Set It and Forget It” Strategy

Many software solutions that help teams and organizations monitor legislation and regulations require constant tinkering and updating key search terms and queries in order to get the right information at the right time. This “drinking-from-a-firehose” approach can oftentimes lead to teams feeling overwhelmed with too much irrelevant information that slows down productivity and prevents fast action.

One of the main advantages Divij and his team have found with FiscalNote is that, because of how easy it is to use the platform, they don’t have to worry about missing anything anymore.

“Thanks to FiscalNote, I can set it and forget it when monitoring legislation and regulations,” he says.

Divij and his team can now prioritize their time and resources more efficiently at the beginning of state sessions and when the comment period for regulations opens up.

“FiscalNote allows us to see the total life cycle of legislation,” he adds. “We don’t have to worry about missing something because it does the work for us, so we don’t have to spend as much time tracking legislation manually, helping us be more efficient.”

As the blockchain space continues to evolve, for Divij and his team at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, FiscalNote has been there since the beginning.

“Without FiscalNote, I could not keep track of all the different legislation that’s out there by myself," says Divij.