While OurGov was originally conceived as a platform serving lobbyists & lobbying principals, its reach extends to other sectors of state government.
Previously we profiled how our tools can be leveraged by lobbying teams. And now we’ll look at how we help both representative offices and news agencies save time, energy and money.
Representatives & Staffers
We originally developed OurGov with the intention of helping NGOs interact with, track, and engage with you, their Representative and staffers.
However, after talking with our customers and a number of representatives, it was made clear that tools we offer (or are in the process of offering) are valuable to your job as well. Here are a few use cases:
Build coalitions
By leveraging our data-labeling (tagging) technology, we are able to indicate which representatives, in the entire legislature, are most likely to support a bill you are sponsoring.
No need to call around or brainstorm to find more peers to support your bill.
View key vote positions
When it comes time to vote, you may find yourself regularly navigating to the Eye on Lobbying site to check how lobbying principals have registered. OurGov uploads that data directly onto a bill page so that with just one click you can see the positions of your constituents.
Survey stakeholders
*This feature is currently under development.
So much of our communication and work takes place on emails these days. The challenge with email is that it’s temporally organized, not topically.
When it comes time to:
- build a recommendation
- or make a voting decision
you may find yourself having to scroll through emails to find communication relating to the bill in question.
With our upcoming survey tool, you can pose questions to your key stakeholders and view all of their responses alongside the bill. Which saves a ton of time when you’re voting on new bills every week.
Communicate quickly
Similar to surveying stakeholders, coordinating communication on various bills can also be cumbersome when you receive dozens (if not hundreds) of emails a day.
Bill commenting
With our bill commenting functionality, you and your staff can keep all of your communications organized alongside the bill.
Voting recommendations
*This feature is currently under development
We’re also working on a formal tool so that your staffers can provide consistent voting recommendation reports to you. These reports will be sent via email notifications and can be seen alongside bills within OurGov.
News Agencies
OurGov’s tools are also a natural fit for news reporters and producers. Take a look at a few of our use cases below for ideas.
Quickly find subject matter experts
With our bill tagging technology, our product allows you to find the representatives that most (and least) closely associate with a given topic. We base this data not on their public comments, but their actual bill sponsorship.
So you can spare yourself the hours calling from office to office and getting the runaround of whom to talk to.
Data at your fingertips
Use our easy-to-understand filtering tools to:
- find bills relating to the topic at hand
- determine how many passed, failed, or were vetoed
- identify who sponsored which
so you can get the information you need more quickly.
Data you can be confident in
OurGov is to be used not only by non-profit and private enterprises, but by legislators and their teams. Our data is derived directly from government databases and undergoes the strictest of testing. So that you can feel comfortable sourcing OurGov in your reporting.
Interested in checking these features out? Click here to check out OurGov and start your free trial of OurGov Premium.