Case Study: How a Senator’s Office Uses MassTrac to Track Bills
Before MassTrac, Cameron Lease, Legislative Director for Senator Susan Moran’s Office (Plymouth and Barnstable District), relied on manual methods and spreadsheets to track bills. This approach was labor-intensive, requiring significant time and resources. Bills were at risk of slipping through the cracks due to the sheer volume and pace of legislative activity. Additionally, staying on top of key legislative trends and preparing resources for municipalities demanded a considerable investment of time and effort. “I’ve been in the legislature for four and half years, and had my own spreadsheet of bills, and had an intern check the numbers and update them,” said Lease. “It’d take a lot of time and we had to check through all 60 or 70 bills and sometimes there’d be no updates anyways.”
Recognizing the need to digitize their processes for greater effectiveness, the office turned to InstaTrac. By leveraging InstaTrac’s MassTrac software, they could automate much of the tracking work, allowing them to focus on analyzing trends and the potential impact of proposed legislation. MassTrac features, such as bill and amendment tracking, summaries, and report generation, streamlined their workflow and facilitated collaboration among team members.
“Our District Director has a track for local bills which is helpful for her to get frequent notifications, and update our internal notes. We can easily queue up a report of just bills related to the district and hand it to the Senator,” Lease explained. “In general, it just helps with delegating bills to each staff member.”
Key Benefits of InstaTrac according to Lease:
1. Efficiency in Bill Tracking: MassTrac’s tracking function allowed them to monitor bills and receive alerts when significant developments occurred, eliminating the need for manual scanning of the notoriously unreliable Massachusetts Legislature website.
2. Data Analysis and Trends Identification: With MassTrac handling routine tracking tasks and providing easy-to-read summaries of bills, the Senator’s Office could devote more time to analyzing legislative trends and enhancing their strategic decision-making process.
3. In-house Legislative Research: The Senator’s Office uses tracks on bill topics, keywords, and other legislators to see if they’d want to co-sponsor a bill or see where their related bill stands. “We track bills that have been reported favorably out of committee and put them in a list and send them to the Senator so she can see what to do about her related bills,” explained Lease. “It’s especially appreciated come Joint Rule 10 day” (the deadline for bills to be reported out of committee).
As Lease aptly highlighted, "InstaTrac has been a game changer for us. Before, tracking bills was a time-consuming task, but now, with InstaTrac, we can focus on analyzing trends and preparing a strategy to move our bills forward. The MassTrac features, such as bill tracking and summaries, have significantly improved our efficiency and effectiveness in navigating the legislative landscape."
InstaTrac has eased legislative tracking for Senator Moran’s Office so that important dialogues or bills don’t slip through the cracks. By leveraging MassTrac's digital capabilities, they have overcome the challenges associated with manual tracking methods and positioned themselves for greater success in advocating for their constituents' interests.