Bloomberg Government Post-Election Guide
Helping government affairs professionals navigate the typical post-election turbulence amid an added layer of complexity from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Essential Toolkit for Government Affairs
Government affairs professionals need to stay one step ahead of it all if they're going to serve their clients with the intel and advocacy they rely on. Bloomberg Government helps you track all the moving parts, keep your stakeholders informed, and build key relationships to make an impact.
How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
As strategies and tactics evolve due to unprecedented national and global change, one thing remains the same: you still have to deliver results.
*Find out the six things you need to know to stay on top of legislative developments and connect with policy makers and their staff. You'll learn how make an impact and succeed in your career.*
Deepen your understanding of the issues that are important to your organization with original Bloomberg Government analysis and a searchable database of 35,000 other sources.
To drive the agenda in Washington, you need to stay on top of each stage of the legislative and rulemaking processes.
Monitoring activity at the state level can mean tracking millions of data points. Trackers and alerts keep you organized and focused.
New faces in Congress and the reshuffling of committee roles means staying on top of the changes can be a full-time job. Make it easy with directories updated in real time.
Find out how alerts, congressional trackers, and calendars delivered right to your inbox ensure you don’t miss a thing.
Discover trends influencing government affairs professionals’ careers, with a focus on salary, compensation, benefits, and the impacts of Covid-19.
News and Analysis
Knowing the news of the day isn't enough for government affairs professionals to succeed – they need to know the <i>why</i>. Specifically, why it matters to their stakeholders.
Add value by providing deep analysis so clients can make better decisions. That means you need news and insights you can trust, all delivered in real time.
Learn About Developments as They Happen
To effectively advocate for a client's interests, lobbyists need to have deep knowledge of the issues and the policies surrounding them. Fast news, paired with exclusive newsletters, analysis, and sophisticated media tracking, ensures you get the full picture and can take action on the headlines.
In such a changing environment, there’s a real need to figure out how do we advance the ball? How do we think creatively, strategically? And then when the next play comes, you have to reassess all over again.
That’s the strategic part of it. That’s the piece about being forward-leaning, regardless of what your role is. But you also have to be able to communicate in a way that all of the stakeholders can really understand and be on the same page.”
Karishma Shah Page, partner, K&L Gates
Here's how Bloomberg Government has you covered:
- Set alerts for specific topics to be sent weekly, daily, or instantly as news is added from more than 35,000 local, national, and international news sources
- Rely on our original reporting and analysis for the latest news as it breaks and the context behind it
- Subscribe to newsletters across 20+ policy areas, including budget, taxes, finance, energy, and trade; our experts break down complex policy developments and offer actionable insights
- Download OnPoint presentations – infographics, charts, PowerPoints, and other data-centered analysis – that dive deep into key policy areas and allow you to easily report to stakeholders
Everyone wants to be the first to know who is taking a lot of the key spots in the government. Not just Cabinet-level officials, but people within the agency management as well.
People will want to know, ‘Who is that, what are my existing relationships with these folks, and how can we figure out how to leverage a new relationship?’”
Rob Recklaus, vice president of sales and customer
engagement, Bloomberg Government
What's Happening in Washington
There’s a lot to track on the Hill, and Bloomberg Government is your one-stop shop to streamline your workflow. We provide best-in-class intelligence so you can keep your stakeholders informed and updated.
Be the first to know about proposed legislation and regulations. Stay on top of new actions, comment deadlines, comment submissions, docket materials, and relevant news, all in a single dashboard and custom daily newsletter.
- Follow bills through every draft with exclusive BGOV bill summaries, including comprehensive coverage of markups, committee and floor amendments, and our redlining text comparison feature
- Access all regulation comments and see how advocates, competitors, and key stakeholders are trying to influence rulemaking
- Monitor comment deadlines and strategically craft your message, positioning, and outreach
- Easily view related regulatory summaries, docket materials, comments, linked legislation, and the CFR
- Set alerts to be notified when bills are introduced in your area of interest and track the most important bills
- Search and set alerts across the Federal Register, Inspection Desk, and OIRA; you can be notified of the rules you care about as they are released by agency, topic, docket, public law, and more
See Bloomberg Government's legislation tracker in action.
Keeping a Pulse on State Legislatures
With 50 states, thousands of legislators, and millions of pieces of legislation and regulation, the amount of data to monitor around state governments is staggering.
Learn how Bloomberg Government's directories, trackers, alerts, and news coverage can help you influence policy making across the country.
Stay in the Know About State Governments
If “all politics is local,” tracking and understanding what’s happening in statehouses around the country is critical to a lobbyist's success.
Instead of spending hours a day looking through hundreds of bills, move faster with legislative and regulatory tracking that differentiates between the bills just introduced and those that matter most to your organization.
- Set notification alerts, so you'll know when state bills are introduced within your area of interest; bill pages include the bill summary, all versions of the bill text, a timeline of actions, related legislative documents, and sponsors and co-sponsors
- Organize your state bills by creating topic- or state-based folders; with folders, you can streamline alerting and generate instant PowerPoint presentations about state legislative updates
- Access state regulations, proposed regulations, and regulatory notices; search by keyword, state, comment deadline, and effective date
Account Manager Laura Molinares explains how our bill tracking tool keeps you informed, from sponsorship to final signature – every markup, every hearing, every day – all in one place.
Who's Who on the Hill and Beyond
Lobbyists need to know who's in control to build relationships with influential lawmakers.
Learn who the governors, lawmakers, and staffers are and know exactly which key policy maker to contact with our directories for D.C. and all 50 states.
Comprehensive Directories Make Networking Easier
Legislators are added to the directory as results are called in their favor, along with detailed custom profiles written by our expert team of Bloomberg Government analysts.
Congressional directories provide important background, so you're prepared for meetings; you’ll find member biographies, including records of bills sponsored, votes, contributions, and district information.
Directories also include congressional staffers and federal agency staff. Create and save custom lists for outreach by office, job title, issue, committee, delegation, educational history, and more. Use our Email Campaign Tool to email lists of staffers directly through our platform. Personalize your communications with attachments and images, and track open rates and other campaign success metrics.
Our database offers profiles of companies as well, including information about leadership, subsidiaries, government contracts, litigation, lobbying data, regulation comments, campaign contributions, and more.
Whenever there's a shakeup in terms of the people in power, your network is also shaken up. You need to start thinking about, 'Do I have the relationships that I need? If not, how do I build them, or is it possible for me to hire consultants and effectively acquire them?'"
Cliff Johnson, general manager of government affairs solutions, Bloomberg Government
Amplify Your Outreach With Megaphone
Bloomberg Government’s Megaphone combines everything you need to build momentum – and a movement – into one easy-to-use resource.
Macro Data
Precise CRM Capabilities
With more in-depth profiles on constituents than any other platform, boost your campaign by appending third-party data to your advocate pool — resulting in better targeting, more outreach, and improved results.
Micro Targeting
More Sophisticated Queries
Easily customize your queries and perform searches with “and/or” parameters using a point-and-click interface. Save static lists or dynamic queries that automatically update.
Mega Reach
Unmatched Outreach Tools
An advocacy platform that offers supporter-centric outreach tools, like peer-to-peer texting and phonebanking. Having everything you need on one platform means you can stop wasting time with partial campaign solutions.
The grassroots advocacy world is much larger and more crowded than ever before. While door-to-door canvassing, direct mail and phone campaigns are still essential, the advent of digital organizing has created new opportunities for organizations to find and engage advocates. But with all the noise and competition in the market, the true challenge for organizations is breaking through to the right audience at the right time.
Learn More
Tracking Legislative Developments
Customizable alerts, trackers, and calendars allow you to cut down the noise and receive info about the topics that matter to you as quickly as possible, right to your inbox.
Be in the Know
With Bloomberg Government, you'll have the tools you need to be successful in government affairs, no matter the issue or what your position is.
We’re seeing the reshaping of our economy in real time, and that is going to significantly influence what Congress and the president do for at least the next two years.”
Rich Gold, partner at Holland & Knight and leader of the firm's public policy and regulation group
Congress Tracker
In addition to bill summaries, hearings, and markups, get live updates from the House and Senate via real-time transcription. Everything is customizable so you get updates only on the issues and bills you follow. Our Congress Tracker daily newsletter provides a morning overview of what to expect on the Hill for the day, plus an afternoon wrap-up.
Congressional Calendar
Our event calendar keeps you up to date on happenings that matter to you. Access hearings, testimony, and more at both the congressional and state levels.
Transition Alerts
Be the first to know about presidential, administration, and/or congressional transitions. You have full control over alerts, so you’re alerted only to developments that matter to you.
My BGOV
Label, track, and organize bills, legislators, and articles using custom tags that can be shared with your team. Share notes on legislation and add personalized comments to bill pages, directories, and more.
Meeting Notes
Catalogue internal and external correspondence with stakeholders, Members of Congress, and congressional staff. Share with colleagues, generate reports about team activity, and assign follow up as needed.
Bill Text Comparison
Search within a bill and view a redlined pdf. See even the smallest differences between versions – often minor edits have a major impact. Then view related documents available for download.
Click on the circles to reveal more details about the My BGOV tools.
Shaping a Government Affairs Career
Now is the time when Washington leaders explore new opportunities — making the leap from Capitol Hill to K Street, or someplace in between.
To help you better understand the trends influencing the government affairs industry, see results from our 2020 salary survey and advice from industry insiders.
Compensation Trends in 2020
Bloomberg Government and Women in Government Relations partnered in September 2020 to survey more than 800 government affairs professionals. While some things changed compared to our 2018 findings, much remained the same, particularly the gender pay gap. Women in 2020 still face many of the pervasive challenges in their work environment as they do every year.
The average 2019 base salary across all respondents was $154,796. Those working for associations/nonprofits or colleges/universities made less ($122,915) than those in corporate/private companies ($187,291). Women made less than men ($135,060 compared to $186,681) on average across all types of organizations – a 38% difference in base salary.
What I Wish I’d Known
Advice for congressional staffers looking to make the jump to government affairs.
Jeff Denham
Before: Four-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California
After: Government affairs counselor, K&L Gates
Leaving public life, or certainly leaving elected office, you really have to define what you want to do next. … Look at what you're passionate about and try to define that position for yourself rather than taking the first position that comes along.”
Nicole Venable
Before: Chief of Staff, Rep. William Jefferson
After: Federal Lobbyist, Invariant
“Do your reconnaissance on a potential workplace. You have to do a 360-degree ask about the people there, the environment, what the mission is, how stable its member companies are. Then you should look at what a new Washington could look like for that company or industry, and figure out if you are passionate about those things.”
Ivan Zapien
Before: Chief of Staff, Sen. Bob Menendez
After: Partner and head of government relations and public affairs practice,
Hogan Lovells
“You don't know as much as you think you do about what is valuable about you. One thing I've learned is to listen a lot more than I talk when I'm thinking about new opportunities, because that feedback is really important to help you understand your value proposition.”
Kathryn Schubert
Before: Leg. Director, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest
After: President & CEO, Society for Women’s Health Research
“Although I felt confident about the inner workings of the Hill, it was unclear to me at the time what a valuable skill that is in D.C. – it just felt like I knew people and had been a part of the process. It took time to realize that this is a tangible, valuable, ‘sellable’ skill set.”
