What Three Years of Working with AI Taught Me About Legislative Affairs
I spent the last three years learning about artificial intelligence. MassTrac, in fact, was the first state-based legislative intelligence and tracking service to offer AI-based benefits. Over that time, we hosted several national conferences of state-based services to show what we’d done, and to learn from others of new AI-based features and functionalities they were considering.
The MassTrac development team, with specialists in California’s Bay Area, Fargo ND, and in Ukraine, tested several AI products, we spent a lot of money, we failed a few times, we saw what worked and what didn’t, and we applied what we learned the very specific realities of the Massachusetts process.
We were the first service in the country to convert the oral component of all State House events into searchable transcripts: committee hearing, floor debates, special commission and task force meetings, Governor’s Council hearings, and state agency regulatory hearings. Now, everyone’s getting in on the game.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that anyone claiming to be an “AI expert” right now is overselling themselves. We’re all still learning. This is my analysis of how AI is changing legislative affairs, and where I think it’s heading.
AI Isn’t Magic
Most conversations about AI in government affairs swing between hype and fear. Either AI will “change everything overnight,” or it will somehow undermine the human side of policymaking - including lobbying.
Beacon Hill moves slowly. So, time isn’t the problem. The real challenge for lobbyists and advocates is in navigating a process that can feel opaque, inconsistent, and difficult to follow from the outside.
Bills don’t advance through formal processes. They stall, they resurface, they quietly get amended, and they move - or don’t move - based on rules and timelines that aren’t always intuitive, or followed, or transparent.
What Worked When We Applied AI to Massachusetts Lawmaking
At MassTrac, we know the top five things our clients need to know:
- Bills of interest to their organizations, or to their clients
- The quick substance of bills
- What changed when new text is substituted for earlier bill versions
- What happened as major bills and legislative versions of budgets get amended by ever-growing numbers of these mini-bills
So, we built tools using AI with human oversight. One is the ability of our subscribers to find bills of interest with words users may not have considered – even bills with no key words in that nonetheless are important.
Bill Overviews
When new bill text is uploaded to MassTrac, an “Overview” is generated at the same time giving users a clear understanding of what the bill is all about. Instead of waiting, you get an instant summary. And you can now listen to those overviews.
Smart Compare
Smart Compare is our AI-update to the former MassTrac bill-text-comparison tool. There are now six ways to see how bill text changed, and two ways to view those changes. We always offered the option to view changes inline, but now we added a more beneficial side-by-side view. Changes we look at include sections that are added, omitted, edited, moved, and unchanged. There is no better way on any service anywhere to learn of what changed.
Smart Search
We worked closely with a development team that specializes in Government Technology to create a new search option that finds bills through natural language querying, not merely by keyword search.
You can search for this: “asbestos regulations for commercial property.”
Or this: “child support for single parents.”
You even can search in Smart Search for “Taylor Swift."
AI proved useful when it allowed users to search across Massachusetts General Laws (MGL) citation titles, bill titles, bill text, MassTrac bill Overviews and bill categories.
Transcript Synopses
In addition to creating the cleanest, edited, versions of transcripts that you can find, we added AI-generated synopses to transcripts. At the top of each synopsis you find speaker bills mentioned. These are followed by a summary of each event. You don’t need to send a staffer to take notes of events. MassTrac creates it for you.
Where This Leaves Us
Three years in, I’m more optimistic than ever about the future of AI and legislative affairs. We’re working now on an AI tool to create research papers for our users on legislative issues.
AI isn’t going to eliminate the human touch. It won’t replace relationships, experience, or political judgment. But it can help professionals navigate a system that is complex, and difficult to peer into, and that is ever changing.
This is my best take on how AI is changing legislative affairs in Massachusetts - and how it can be used responsibly, thoughtfully, and in service of ever better policymaking.
If you’re a Massachusetts lobbyist, legislator, staffer, or advocate experimenting with AI – or if you are skeptical of it - I’d genuinely welcome the opportunity to chat with you. What would help you navigate Beacon Hill more effectively? You, who are doing the work every day, will shape what comes next. Let’s do it together.
