How to use our Massachusetts bill tracking (and more!) service
Legislata is productivity software that can be used to share information and notifications within a community. We’re piloting a use of this aspect to create a partially automated, partially user-generated bill tracking service for the Massachusetts State Legislature. It offers daily updates on legislation, events, and Tweets from the House and Senate, as well as anything else members want to share.
Users can sign up to receive notifications on particular topics, bills, issues, or people and everyone who joins also has access to Legislata’s suite of productivity features so you can handle your own work and keep up with what matters in one place.
Here is how to join and get started keeping up to date with what’s happening on Beacon Hill even faster.
How to join
The Massachusetts State Legislature office is invite-only as we get started so we can manage it appropriately. You can get your invite by emailing chris@legislata.com or fill out the below contact form to ask to join. We’ll send you a link to join and you can set up a personal demo/walkthrough of the product as well.
Tracking updates
We will post daily updates on three things:
New events at the State House
Legislative changes, including new bills introduced and current bills advancing
Top tweets from representatives and senators, so you can see what they’re saying on Twitter without having to scroll all day
To read these updates, you can go to the Posts tab on the left of the screen when you’re in the Massachusetts State Legislature office. They’ll appear in a scroll like Twitter.
Searching for old updates
Every post can be tagged with the bill it relates to, issues, topics, or people. It can be tagged with as many that it relates to. You can then search for old posts by those tags or by the text of the title or description.
This is one of the advantages of using Legislata as a bill tracking service or to keep track of your office’s own notes. Everything is in one place, easily searchable, and there’s no need for endless folders to click through to get what you need.
Set up notifications
Let’s say there are a few bills that you want to be alerted about when they move. Or a particular elected official whose press releases you want to know about. Or a topic you really care about.
You can set up notifications for any bill, issue, topic, or contact in any office. Head to your account page when in the Massachusetts State Legislature office and put those items in the My Notifications boxes. When someone in that office creates a post tagged with one of those items, you’ll receive a notification. You can see all notifications by clicking on the alarm bell in the top right corner. You can also set up email notifications, either to receive a new email whenever you receive a notification, or to receive a daily summary every morning.
Your notifications sidebar and email notifications will be for all notifications you receive across all offices you’re a part of – not just the Massachusetts State Legislature. This lets you receive a single email in the morning with what matters most to you, both within your own organization and in whatever other communities you’re a part of.
Contribute to the Massachusetts State Legislature office
Members of offices can create their own posts and tag them with bills / issues / topics / contacts. Do you have a press release you want others to know about? Hearing testimony that should be seen? A floor speech that others may want to be notified about?
Create a post and add the relevant tags. Others in the office will see it and anyone who has set up notifications on those tags will receive an alert.
Set up your own office
Do you find this useful, but wish it also existed for the Cape, or Western Mass municipal politics, energy policy in New England, or any other state? You can create your own office and invite others to it. Start sharing information, commenting on posts, getting notified and collaborating on work in a simple and easy framework.
If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch at chris@legislata.com if there’s anything else you’d like to see.