Legislative Bill Tracking Guide

What is legislation tracking?

Legislation tracking is the process of following the path a proposed bill takes after it’s introduced in a legislative body. Legislative tracking allows public affairs professionals to know exactly where a bill is in the process of potentially becoming a law. This tracking may also include additional details related to a piece of legislation, such as committee markups, version histories, and social media posts or other public statements made by legislators.

While bill tracking is most commonly used to monitor the progress of current legislation, some professionals also use this method to retrospectively understand the history and lifecycle of older, previously proposed legislation.

How tracking legislation supports a comprehensive public affairs strategy

A legislative or public affairs strategy helps organizations, companies, or other interest groups influence public opinion or shape policy decisions. Such strategies can help organizations manage their reputation by giving them a way to communicate their values, positions, and contributions; this work can also help organizations build trust and credibility, mitigate potential risks and regulatory hurdles, or navigate shifting public sentiment.

Tracking legislation can be a key part of a successful public affairs strategy by helping to ensure communication and advocacy actions are well-timed to support strategic goals. Bill analysis and tracking can help public affairs professionals be more proactive, timely, and strategic by making it easier to monitor legislation that may potentially affect their stakeholders and ultimately better understand how to engage at key moments to maximize the impact of their advocacy strategy.

“In every endeavor we do, we look at it from a strategic perspective, from an operational perspective, and from a tactical perspective,” said Darrell Conner, government affairs counselor at K&L Gates. “In order to develop any strategy, you really need to know what the playing field looks like, and what the political dynamics are, what the policy dynamics are, and then you can put together a strategy and an operations plan that is tactical to move forward.”

As government affairs professionals are aware, a shifting balance of political power in a legislature can have a “pretty dramatic impact on your strategy,” said Conner. “If things change, your strategy must change as a result of that. And so it’s a living document, and it’s something that you have to have as an adaptive tool.”

Keeping up with the sheer volume of legislation

Given the number of bills that are introduced at both the state and federal levels, successful government affairs professionals need to be able to identify and understand relevant legislative activity to advise clients, advocate on their behalf, and deliver policy outcomes. But doing so can be an arduous job, whether you’re monitoring bills at the federal level, state level, or both.

For instance, state legislators across the country consider more than 170,000 measures each year, and only about 30,000 of these will become law – fewer than 18%.

The number of federal bills introduced in the U.S. Congress varies each year, depending on factors such as legislative priorities, the partisan balance of power, and elections. As of Nov. 1, 2024, for instance, there were about 18,000 bills and resolutions before Congress. On average, only about 6% of proposed federal legislation passes – and in recent years, Congress has passed even fewer bills. In fact, the 118^th Congress passed only 27 bills through both chambers in 2023 – a record low.

Forecasting regulatory changes

Legislative bill tracking can also help public affairs professionals prepare their clients or stakeholders for forthcoming legislative or regulatory changes and anticipate their potential impact on costs, processes, and compliance. Even when organizations aren’t actively involved in lobbying, having an early view of the political and legislative landscape can help organizations make easier transitions when laws change.

How to find pending legislation and track the progress of a bill

Years ago, before digital tools were available, government affairs professionals would track the progress of bills using simple tools such as scissors (to cut out relevant clips from printed sources), file folders, and notepads, while also leveraging their personal relationships with policymakers and staffers.

Today, modern public affairs professionals may still get key legislative and political updates from their professional networks, but they can now rely on a variety of sophisticated digital tools to more accurately track the progress of bills.

Free bill tracking resources

There are free online resources for legislative information, including the official websites of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. State legislatures and the District of Columbia also publish information about individual bills on their official websites. Professionals may also consult government transparency organizations and various news outlets for background information and certain details about pending legislation and relevant members of Congress.

Such a manual and disconnected tracking method can become a tedious and time-consuming task, especially for professionals who work on multiple issues or across several states. Plus, full-text searching on government websites can surface many irrelevant results that require more time to sift through before finding what you’re looking for. Reporting language, codes, and terminology can all vary among state legislatures – even for laws and items that they have in common – which can make manual searches more complicated and prone to missing information.

Automated bill tracking tools

To overcome these obstacles, many public affairs professionals now use legislative bill tracking software as a more sophisticated way to stay up to date with bills and related policy discussions at both the federal and state levels. These tracking tools and services can help automate bill tracking and even notify users about legislative action that affects a bill’s progress. Bill tracking software can also provide a timeline of a bill’s history and progress in addition to resources to identify and contact key policymakers.

Bloomberg Government’s legislative and regulatory tracking tool offers custom, real-time alerts of federal and state legislative updates. The platform offers easy access to legislative documents, such as Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, committee markups, congressional press releases, and member memos. Users can also access session timelines and calendars (including those for markups), view verbatim transcripts of congressional hearings, and get a complete financial picture of legislation with budget tables and appropriations monitoring.

For public affairs professionals working across jurisdictions, Bloomberg Government’s heatmap, bill summary, and text comparison functionality allow users to spot differences between bill versions and compare legislation across states to get a real handle on the details of proposed legislation.

But while legislative bill tracking software can help to streamline your tracking process and put the latest news and analysis at your fingertips, it’s also important to be strategic about the bills and information you target.

“You can set up 1,000 alerts, but at some point, you’ve got to start weeding them down to what’s really relevant. Otherwise, you just increase your level of anxiety because you feel more overwhelmed by the level of information that you’re getting,” said Conner.

“In terms of legislative tracking, the two most important things to me are preparation and prioritization,” added Brody Garland, government affairs analyst at K&L Gates. “Your legislative tracking is only going to be as good as the time you put in up front,” he said, noting that identifying your client’s needs and the issues that you care about, and then systematically planning ahead about the most important things are “key.”