Technology Policy Tracker: Advancing Collaboration and Insights in Tech Policy
By Theodora Skeadas and Rehan Mirza
Vision and Launch
The Tech Policy Tracker project began in the summer of 2023 with the vision to create a centralized resource of US technology policy and legislation for policymakers, researchers, and advocates. Recognizing the great work done by civil society organizations in building more specialized trackers, we aggregated this work to produce our first iteration of the tracker in early 2024. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Users appreciated the breadth of coverage and the tracker’s ability to identify key trends in the tech policy landscape, some of which are highlighted in this presentation. This feedback underscored the tracker’s potential to fill a critical gap in the policy space, setting the stage for its continued development.
Ongoing Development and Building on User Feedback
Alongside the positive reception came valuable user feedback for further development. While the spreadsheet format worked well for many, some users found it less intuitive to navigate. The data, though broad, did not cover a full range of technology-related policies. Additionally, working with a small group of dedicated volunteers, it was challenging to keep up with the ever-evolving legislative landscape.
In the summer of 2024, we sought to address these challenges as we recruited a new team of interns at Cambridge Local First. We set out to enhance the comprehensiveness and navigability of the tracker with the following use cases in mind:
With the hard work of our summer volunteers, we tagged and updated all existing data fields. We also created dashboards to visualize key statistics and developed a user-friendly interface featuring updated dashboards and a searchable directory for state and federal policies. These improvements transformed the tracker from a static resource into an intuitive, dynamic tool.
To address the challenge of keeping pace with evolving legislation, we implemented an automated process for future updates. Filtering data from Legiscan, a database for all legislation in the US, we can now provide a complete set of technology legislation and keep this regularly updated. Additionally, Digital Policy Alert continues to provide invaluable data on non-legislative policies, including regulatory developments and landmark legal cases.
What the Tracker Looks Like Now
As a user you now have three navigation options to access the information you need, depending on your use case:
Searchable Directory: Explore state and federal policies using hybrid keyword and semantic search, with options to filter on theme, date of introduction, policy status, and introducing entity.
2. Dashboard Visualizations: View high-level insights through interactive summary statistics.
3. Spreadsheet: View the raw data for custom analysis.
Conclusion
This has been a rewarding project that we sincerely hope fills an important gap in the technology policy space, and one we plan to continue to build upon. Crucially, it has been a team effort, with contributions from senior stakeholders, institutional supporters, and hardworking volunteers often starting out their career in this space.
Special thanks to our senior contributors for their invaluable guidance and institutional support: Jeff Allen, Spencer Gurley, and Sofia Bonilla from the Integrity Institute; Justin Hendrix and Ben Lennett from Tech Policy Press; Pooja Paode from Cambridge Local First; as well as Integrity Institute Fellows Arushi Saxena and David Evan Harris. Their expertise and institutional support were instrumental in bringing the tracker to life. We also want to reiterate the importance of two critical sources — LegiScan for legislative data and Johannes Fritz, Tommaso Giardini, and the team at Digital Policy Alert for broader policy contributions.
This project would also not have been possible without our dedicated team of interns and volunteers! Thank you to Maya Vishwanath, Zhixiao Yip, Christy Zheng, Hawraz Jamal, Mohammed Al-Tal, Anjali Gurumoorthy, Gabrielle Powers, Rohith Raman, Zachary Myers, and David Xiong for their significant contributions to this effort.
As we continue to grow this initiative, we are always open to feedback and support. If you have ideas or would like to get involved, please contact us at info@techpolicytracker.com.