How Top-Performing Government Affairs Teams Find Their Edge With PolicyNote

The top-performing government affairs professionals do things differently from the norm. They’re strategic, rely on technology to do more with less, and report on their work to prove the value of their role. Understanding what top government affairs teams do can help you benchmark your performance and identify ways to advance to the next level. 

Drawing on insights from the 2025 State of Government Affairs industry report, which surveyed 1,000 professionals in the industry, we identified some of the patterns exhibited by high-performing industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned government affairs veteran or new to the field, these insights into the tools professionals rely on can help you upgrade your strategic capabilities. 

Here’s what the top government affairs professionals do differently:

They Use Technology to be More Efficient

Faced with increasing workloads, the best government affairs teams count on established tools and technology to help them be more efficient and make sure they don’t miss anything. 48 percent rely on a news subscription, like CQ News, while 40 percent use a U.S. legislative and regulatory tracker, such as PolicyNote. These teams are capable of tracking more of their issues, and the efficiency with which they are alerted to items requiring their attention allows them to be proactive in mitigating risk and acting on new opportunities.

“I’ve seen the number of issues I have to follow increase,”  says Seth Chase, government affairs director at the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. “It makes the tools I use — FiscalNote, CQ, Knowlegis, and VoterVoice — more crucial in alerting me to developments, tracking my efforts, and getting communications out.” 

In addition to using currently available technology, leading teams are quicker to incorporate emerging technology into their workflows. To no surprise, AI topped the list in our survey. 89 percent of government affairs teams stated they are exploring using AI to make them more efficient and get tasks done quicker. They are using AI for common tasks such as bill analysis and summaries, bill comparisons, as well as creating communications and other content. 

One solution that has been successful in enhancing the efficiency of government affairs teams is PolicyNote. By combining reliable policy monitoring tools with functional applications of AI, PolicyNote has sped up the tasks of tracking, understanding, and briefing on complex policy. With this tool, teams have significantly reduced the time spent sorting through extensive documents, allowing government affairs professionals to focus on advancing their agenda.

Having PolicyNote in their toolkit puts them among the top-performing government affairs professionals who use AI for daily tasks and free up more time for impactful work. 

They Track Legislation Like a Hawk

Government affairs teams are tasked with following a vast number of issues, with 48 percent tracking 20+ issues. Workloads continue to increase, as we’ve seen every year, with 83 percent seeing some level of increase in the issues their team is tasked with following. 

However, 54 percent of government affairs professionals spend under 10 hours a week monitoring bills. This is possible with sophisticated tools like PolicyNote that take the guesswork out of finding legislation that could impact your company. PolicyNote makes it easy to sift through vast amounts of bills, ask questions about their potential impact, and get alerted about important issues.

74 percent of government affairs professionals say they miss the occasional piece of important legislation, while approximately 10 percent miss a significant amount in a busy year. A lucky 9 percent say they never miss anything. If missing important legislation keeps you up at night, legislative tracking tools are essential to make sure you don’t miss anything. PolicyNote makes sure CQ News stories, executive orders, bill status, and policy data are front and center every day. You’ll also get targeted alerts about the issues you care about. 

“CQ always gets me the information I need — sometimes even faster than the official government websites are updated,” says Shelley Castle, a legislative specialist at Hogan Lovells. “That puts me ahead of the game and makes me look like a superstar!”   

They Report on Their Work

Top-performing teams showcase their work by implementing streamlined reporting processes.

By leveraging PolicyNote’s advanced reporting tools, you can save valuable time and resources so you can focus on strategy and impactful actions. 

With PolicyNote, you can easily create compelling and visual reports highlighting key legislation

influenced, actions taken, stakeholder interactions, and the resulting impact on your organization’s goals and objectives. Gain an “at-a-glance” perspective of the actions you and your team have taken over a specific period of time and easily download graphics to incorporate into your reports.

Demonstrating the impact of your team’s work is only possible if you’re tracking the right metrics and performance indicators. By establishing clear goals and measurable outcomes, you can provide tangible evidence to prove your value.  

They Cultivate Strong Stakeholder Relationships

Successful government affairs teams recognize the significance of building and nurturing strategic relationships with key stakeholders. FiscalNote’s intuitive stakeholder management solutions make it easy to target, engage, and report on activity with your most important stakeholders, from policymakers to committees to organizational contacts. 

Our stakeholder profiles include all relevant information about each individual, making it easy for you to connect with them and understand their positions on key issues. Take it further by recording and storing all interactions, events, and stakeholder meetings. Our dynamic reporting tools help you simplify, visualize, and measure your engagements so you can holistically understand the impact of key working relationships and more strategically plan for the future.

As budgets tighten and legislative activity moves at a faster pace, having the right tools for the job can ensure you continue setting the standard in the industry. Designed for busy government affairs professionals driven to succeed, PolicyNote speeds up the tasks of tracking, summarizing, and briefing on policy. Go beyond bill tracking with PolicyNote. Request a demo.