The latest example comes from Fireside, a wholly owned subsidiary of the software and data company FiscalNote.
According to a news release last week, FiscalNote's new Fireside State software-as-a-service platform is designed especially for use by state and local government to help officials keep better track of office tasks than they could, say, with an Excel spreadsheet. More specifically, the platform includes features such as mail management and audience targeting, newsletter outreach, constituent surveys, validating constituent information to match them with their districts, and phone and video connectivity, including the ability to conduct virtual town halls.
Fireside launched its first CRM about a decade ago, and this new product builds on lessons learned from the federal sector, Fireside co-founder Josh Billigmeier told Government Technology.
“Our congressional clients get around 30,000 letters a year,” he said, highlighting the need for more efficient digital tools to keep track of all that correspondence — all of which tends to require some sort of response from the elected official, lest the sender become resentful.
During the pandemic, Billigmeier said, communication with elected officials — including at the state and local levels, where so much of the COVID-19 response happened — only increased.
“Last year was a massive year for constituent requests,” he said. Those communications included a flood of inquiries about unemployment benefits and stimulus payments.
According to Billigmeier, one of the inspirations for this state- and local-level tool came from a state legislator in North Carolina who often dealt with constituent complaints about the paperwork required for hunting and fishing licenses. He wanted not only to improve the process but also to keep constituents closely informed about their requests.
“These days, there is a trust breakdown between the public and legislators,” Billigmeier said, and that’s another big reason he is bullish on this type of technology.
Opportunity might also come from the less-than-glamorous reality of being a state lawmaker in some places. According to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 10 states have full-time, well-paid and large staffs for state lawmakers. Low-paid, part-time and relatively small staffs serve lawmakers in 10 states. The remainder of state lawmakers have some combination thereof, though not all of them do that job full time.
The National Conference of State Legislatures has not collected data on the types of CRM tools used by state lawmakers, said Pam Greenberg, a senior fellow there.
“But we have heard of legislatures using many different commercial CRM software packages over the years,” she told Government Technology. “In addition, IT staff in some states have developed in-house CRM systems — not just Excel-based tools.”
