The State of the States

Developed by Chris Gilson in the LSE Phelan United States Centre, The State of the States is an online professional subscription service platform which aims to increase knowledge and awareness of US state and local policy and politics issues and improve policymaking by connecting US state and local government policymakers and practitioners with the best practice they need to do their job.

The platform has two main components:

• A free, map-based database of US state information
• A subscriber-only database of case studies covering state and local policymaking.

More than 10 million people work in US state and local governments. Each one of these employees works in one of 50 states. That's 50 different administrations, 50 different ways of doing things, 50 different ways of solving similar problems like how to tackle COVID-19, homelessness and unemployment. Rather than reinventing the wheel 50 times over for every single problem faced by government, wouldn’t it be better for those working in state and local governments to share what works – and what doesn’t – to solve the problems they’re facing?

Our research has revealed that policy practitioners want to learn from their peers in other governments about best practices for addressing policy problems, but there is no systematic way for them to do this.

Much of this is down to the perennial constraints faced by practitioners: a lack of time and monetary resources; staff churn; legislative term limits; and legacy ways of listening to citizens. 

The State of the States is a subscription service which curates and provides instantly this information for policymakers and governments.

In 2018, the LSE US Centre created a free online resource, The State of the States, which showcased key statistics and data about policy and politics in each of the 50 US states. This platform went on to win a Guardian Universities Award for Digital Innovation in April 2019.

Chris spent the summer of 2020 talking to US local and state government policy practitioners about the problems they face, and where they get the information they need to solve them. Based on these discussions and the positive response to the first version of The State of the States, we decided to develop a new commercial and self-sustainable platform based around sharing best practice information about policies while keeping the free aspect of The State of the States as an educational tool.

Following our problem discovery work in summer 2020, we’re now building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test the market for a commercial platform. Once it’s completed, we will test the usability and usefulness of this commercial MVP with potential customers and continue to scope users' needs for the next level of service, which will include creating subscription tiers and improving the user experience.

The State of the States is now in the Beta phase of its development, and we are reaching out to policy practitioners in the US to validate the value of the platform to them. We will be entering the final development phase of the site in early 2022 and are hoping to launch the live version in late spring 2022.

We’re based in the UK at a time when international travel is discouraged and restricted, so getting our platform and letting people know how it can solve the problems they’re facing will require some more creative thinking.

Given the scale of the challenges facing public servants in the US, we also need resources to be able to access the expertise we need to be able to populate our databases with the data and case studies that will make the platform attractive commercially.

In our next stage, we require analysts and business development to grow the platform's resources to enhance our subscription offer. Network introductions are also important; we’re keen to make links with people and organisations - including practitioners and academics - doing related work in the US to help us break into the US market.  

We are aware that LSE alumni have a great deal of experience, knowledge, and interest in this domain. With that in mind, we would like to discuss how LSE alumni can be part of the next stage of The State of the States project, and how they might help us, for example:

• LSE alumni who currently work in or around US state and local governments to view and test the site as critical friends to validate its value and suggest improvements ahead of the site’s rollout
• Suggest further developments to the site including our next policy domains to cover
• Advice on working in the US state and local government space, including on trends and the general business environment, and how to approach this market and its key stakeholders
• Introductions to representative and advocacy organisations such as the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors' Association
• Contribute case studies or provide leads on or outlines for new case studies to populate the platform.

If you are interested in helping us with any of the above, please contact Chris Gilson at C.H.Gilson@lse.ac.uk. 

We really appreciate it!