@font-face {
font-family: "Calibri";
}@font-face {
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
For public affairs professionals and issues managers, doing business with the federal government has grown more complex than ever, and is likely to get even more complicated in the coming election year. This will make the job of staying on top of government-related issues that are important to clients much more of a practical concern.
Consider the following:
- The 111th Congress passed 13,683 public laws.
- Federal agencies approved a total of 3,566 final rules in 2010.
- In fiscal year 2010, the top 200 federal vendors accounted for 62% of all procurement dollars.
- There are currently 2,112 active federal grant programs.
These stats must be put into the context of the current legislative and regulatory environment, says Brian Weiss, product manager, news and multimedia, Bloomberg Government. On the one hand, businesses are functioning in an increased regulatory environment, while on the other there is a growing availability of government funding. On top of that, public affairs specialists and issues managers are inundated with multiplying and fragmented news and data sources and a distracting focus on headlines and personalities.
Communicators must deal with five pain points in this noisy climate, as identified by Bloomberg while it was doing its research for the launch of Bloomberg Government (BGOV), an all-in-one source for government news, analysis and insights. The pain points:
-
Information and news overload.
-
The stakes are high, which means you can’t afford to lose track of the flow of information.
-
A lack of focus on the business impact of government news—on the dollar impact of decisions in Washington.
-
Communicators need to be able to navigate information based on how an issue affects their clients, not on how someone else organizes the information. There are too many Web sites to track.
-
Poor user experience.
Bloomberg’s BGOV was launched earlier this year with these pain points in mind. It combines data, tools, news, white papers and forward-looking analysis to provide issues managers with the business implications of government actions.
“About two years ago Bloomberg wanted to expand its footprint beyond Wall Street into new markets that had a huge need for information, and Washington seemed like the perfect opportunity because of the increasing regulatory environment,” says Weiss. “It struck us that there was a lack of one, true information service serving all the unique niches in Washington.”
Whatever method or service they use, issues managers will have an increasing need in 2012 to monitor government news and receive alerts, and to find new ways of staying in the know and being on the front lines of information.
George Sifakis, CEO, Axela, a strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C., has also recognized the need for one comprehensive site that manages the flow of information in the capital. “Having all the information necessary to make informed decisions on messaging in one place is a time saver and allows us to serve as a time multiplier for our clients,” he says.
As we head into an election year it will be critical for communicators to quickly gauge what the major issues will be and how to impact specific messages, Sifakis says. The challenge of identifying key trends in Washington and filtering what matters most to one's clients has never been greater, and it’s up to communicators to figure out the optimal ways to leverage news to their advantage, track the latest legislative updates, get to the heart of the inner workings of Congress and perhaps predict who will be the winners and losers next year in Washington.