UTAH LEGISLATIVE BILL WATCH

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1 UTAH LEGISLATIVE BILL WATCH Category: Fast Track Solutions Contact: David Fletcher State of Utah Project Initiation and Completion Dates: December 2012/Completion February 2013 NASCIO

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Utah was the first state to allow citizens to track legislative bills on their phone or tablet as the bill moves through the legislative process. Every event of the bill process is broadcast out to the mobile devices of interested citizens within seconds. Users can easily monitor the progress of all Utah Legislation conveniently from their mobile devices, such as when committees vote, when fiscal notes are added and when the House or Senate votes. Users can select which bills they are interested in, whether they are education bills, the state budget, or new gun control laws. With the new mobile application, Bill Watch, you can create a list of bills to track and then receive instant updates as bills move through the Utah Legislative process. The native application is free and works on Apple mobile devices (iphone, ipad, ipod Touch) and Android devices. Bill Watch has advanced search capabilities and allows users to search for bills by: Topic Legislator's name Bill number Recently added bills Most watched bills Bill updates are sent directly to the mobile device via push notification. The Utah.Gov Legislative Bill Watch application is now the easiest way to track and follow important legislation. 2

3 DESCRIPTION OF THE BUSINESS PROBLEM AND SOLUTION Before implementation of Bill Watch, citizens had to manually track Utah Legislative by searching for each bill through the state s website. This is a time consuming, inefficient process. Utah has a part-time legislature, spanning from the third Monday in January to the first Wednesday in March. During this concentrated period of time, tracking the hundreds of introduced bills and their different iterations can be very complicated. We wanted to make the process easier for citizens and encourage stronger engagement with and more direct access to legislative activity. Additionally, legislators and their staff find the application incredibly useful to view bill progression at a glance and be alerted to bill movement while working on many important issues. This solution pushes the information directly to the citizen, legislator or lobbyist wherever they are. This frees up the person from being tethered to their desktop computer. They can be in a meeting, not even touching their phone or tablet and see critical information updates cross their screen. Issue or problem context The previous method of searching the state website to determine the current status of a bill had a tradeoff between having relevant information and spending time to get the information. In order to receive relevant timely information, users would have to check the legislature web site more frequently. The new method provides information much quicker and does not require time to find the information. Citizen engagement is a goal of the legislature and now citizens have access to timely information. Solution Description To fix the tradeoff issue between information and effort, users are now able to sign up to watch a bill and then they automatically receive push notifications to their mobile device. Now every user is on the same footing, effortlessly getting the information they want delivered to their mobile phone or tablet within seconds after an event happened. Users can easily: Search for Utah bills by topic, bill number, legislator's name See a list of newly added bills Subscribe to one or many bills to watch Receive push notifications when the bill status changes View full details of the bill View list of bills being watched Bill Watch has four major components that were built with a range of technologies: Microsoft.NET is used by the Legislature s web service to submits real time to Utah Interactive s web service. 3

4 Utah Interactive s web service and online application was built with Java and a MySQL database. Objective C was used for the native iphone & ipad applications. The Android native application was written in Java. All data is stored on the MySQL db, not on the devices. Push Notifications are sent to the iphones and ipads using Apple s Push Notification Service or APN. Android devices receive push notification through the Google Cloud Messaging service. Solution Architecture Timeline: Length of Time in Operation Planned launch date: 2/25/2013-Actual launch date: 2/11/2013 Planned development time: 10 weeks-actual development time: 6 weeks Innovative Characteristics Utah is the first state to create an innovative mobile tracking service for state legislation. The Utah Bill Watch is written natively for ios and Android and users receive updates through Apple and Android s push notification service. Push Notifications are a powerful way to broadcast immediate information to users but have rarely been utilized by government services. Citizens who are tracking bills receive an alert on their phone or tablet much like a text message. Leverage and Transferability The use of push notifications to citizen and government official s mobile devices can be used in many other areas of government. It is especially useful where users make the same request repeatedly and the information is time sensitive. This notification could be used to notify citizens when Public Meetings are scheduled in their school district, city or county. This could also be used as a reminder service for expiring licenses, vehicle renewals, permits issued or when liens are placed on a property.it can also be applied to government to government services as an alternate to systems. The benefit of the push notification over the system is when the information is urgent, users don t need to check their account to receive the notification. 4

5 Project Management This project followed a traditional waterfall project management approach. The need was first defined in the business case and multiple solutions were discussed. Because of the short time between defining the need and the upcoming legislative session, the project goals were defined to focus the team on the top goals and to not embellish the project. The team was assembled and project was designed. There was quick coordination between the Office of Legislative Research and General Council and Utah Interactive designed a web service to post information updates about bills. Utah Interactive then designed a web application to track which mobile devices are interested in which bills along with the native IOS and Android applications to receive the information. Communication Plan The new application was published in the following methods: 1. Listing in the Apple Store and Google Play store a. The native applications were posted in the two stores with text that would allow interested citizens to discover the application with obvious search terms. 2. Direct contact to the leaders of the State Senate and the House of Representatives. a. The day the applications were available in the Apple store and the Google Play store, s were sent to the chiefs of staff for the Utah Senate and the Utah House of Representatives. b. Those s were immediately forwarded to all of the legislators and their staff. c. Some legislator s included a write up about the application in their regular newsletters to their constituents. 3. Links to the app stores were put on the main Utah.gov Mobile application page: SIGNIFICANCE TO THE IMPROVEMENTS OF THE OPERATION OF GOVERNMENT Real Benefits of the Project Include: Convenient citizen access- Citizens save time given the 24-hour access and ease of use- directly accessing information from their mobile or other tablet device. Decreases barriers to information, increasing citizen participation in the legislative process. Efficiencies for Legislators and their staff. Description of Beneficiary/Stakeholder Groups Many Stakeholders benefit from this project: Citizens- with push alerts, real-time data access, and a customizable interface, citizens can easily track bills of interest. Given the automated nature of the service, citizens save substantial amounts of time as compared to the former manual process. Legislators and Legislative Staff/Interns- Utah legislators are elected from the populace, the majority of them having a full-time profession besides their role as a representative. Given the consolidated schedule, they may rely heavily on interns or staff members. Bill Watch allows the 5

6 legislator and their staff to easily manage and track their bills as they evolve and move through the House of Representatives and Senate. Lobbyists- Lobbyists that track several bills are able to monitor and track applicable bills with push notifications sent directly to their phone. Policy, Strategy, Goal Alignment The Bill Watch project seamlessly aligned policy, strategy, and goals. This solution received design input and recommendations from the following groups, The State of Utah House of Representatives, The Utah State Senate, The Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst and the Office of Legislative Research and General Council. A number of lobbyists were also consulted about what features would be useful for their profession. The initial concept was vetted, the Office of Legislative Research and General Council to fed real time data to Utah Interactive whom completed development work on the online web component and the native ios and Android applications. Before the completed application was distributed to the public, beta versions were shown to the chiefs of staff of the Senate and the House as well as the Director of the Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst. Impact Summary One hundred percent of the population is eligible to use the service if they have access to a mobile or tablet device. Since the application was launched simultaneously with the start of the Utah Legislative session, and with no paid marketing, we expected about 350 downloads for the first year. The actual usage of the application was more than double original projections. The following statistics were compiled at the conclusion of the legislative session, March 8th, Downloads 860 users downloaded the app from the app stores o 652 downloaded by IOS users in United States (75%) o 198 downloaded by Android users in United States (23%) Users 580 users tracked bills o 447 users tracked less than 10 bills (77%) o 89 users tracked between 10 & 20 bills (15%) o 44 users tracked more than 20 bills (8%) 161 Bills were tracked by the top user 79 Bills were tracked by the second highest user 77 Bills were tracked by the third highest user Bills 4,617 Bills being watched by all users o 3934 by ios (85%) o 683 by Android (15%) Downloads of "Bill Watch" by OS Android 23% Apple 77% Bills Tracked by OS Android 15% Apple 85% 6

7 Since the end of the legislative session, on March 8th, users have continued to download the application from Apple s app store and Google s Play store. There have been 1013 total downloads of this mobile application. Total Application Downloads The Bill Watch project directly addresses NASCIO s State CIO Priorities. This project is based on mobile services and provides access to information that was previously only accessible on desktop computers. It fits perfectly into the Bring Your Own Device scenario, not only for citizens but also for state employees. The bill watch project also pioneers how mobile technology can replace and even improve on the current desktop technologies. BENEFITS OF THE PROJECT The project greatly increases citizen access to legislative information. Citizens save time given the 24- hour access and ease of use. They can directly access information from their mobile or other tablet device, anywhere and any time. This also decreases barriers of information, encouraging increased citizen participation in the legislative process. Legislators and their staff also benefit from the convenient service. The automated and mobile nature makes it convenient and easy to track any and all changes made to their legislation through push notifications. Financial Benefits This project was built and maintained at no cost to the State of Utah (Self-funded due to the private/public partnership between the state and Utah Interactive). The application is provided at no cost to citizens and government employees. Non-Financial Benefits In addition to the economic benefit of the application, there is an intrinsic value provided by the ease and access to bill information and the ability to track and monitor them. We estimate that a single user may spend 5 to 15 minutes a day checking the status of a single bill that impacts them. The six-week session contains 30 business days. The combined users of Bill Watch tracked 4,617 bills during the last 2013 session. Multiplying the bills tracked by the total time saved, gives a range of 692,550 to 2,077,650 minutes saved in one legislative session (six week period). That total time saved will naturally increase as more people download and use this application. 40,000 Time Saved 20,000 - Minimum Maximum Hours 7