UpState: North Carolina state legislation tracker
Legislative tracking and analysis for North Carolina:
UpState is NC’s fastest and most accurate legislation tracker and committee transcript tool. Built for nonprofits, lobbyists, membership organization and the public, UpState helps North Carolinians keep up with state legislation from the NC General Assembly.
Challenge
Legislation on the state level often has some of the most visible impact on people’s daily lives. Keeping up with movement of bills in the state legislature have long been expensive and somewhat limited to those with close relationships to lawmakers. While tracking software exist, many are housed within national apps or push updates once a day. With the quick pace of (sometimes drastic) changes in legislation often in committee, advocates, journalists, and community members need a better way to keep up.
Outcome
CTD Labs built a legislative tracking app that detects updates to legislative movements and filed bill text every 10 minutes. In addition to seeing updates on the app, users can receive email and SMS alerts based on specific bills and custom keywords when introduced in the NC General Assembly and when changes occur in legislative committees. The app continues to receive feature updates, with recent additions including recordings and automated transcripts of committee meetings and a dashboard for insights into legislator activity on votes and bill sponsorship.
Impact
UpState has helped more nonprofits and journalists more easily nad quickly keep track of movements in NC state legislation. Through UpState alerts, advocates have been able to influence the legislative process more effectively on behalf of their constituents.
