How an Idea Becomes a Publication (to the tune I’m Just a Bill on Capitol Hill)

If you’re a GenX kid like me you definitely remember Schoolhouse Rock and I’m Just a Bill on Capitol Hill or, my personal favorite, Three is a Magic Number (and the subsequent De La Soul sampling it in their 1989 song, The Magic Number). These catchy cartoons taught young kids everywhere about the United States legislative system, math, grammar, science and other complicated subjects. In this blog I shall do my best to channel Schoolhouse Rock and tell you how an idea becomes a publication.

If you read my last blog (award winning and internationally famous), you know that I’ve been with AMR client NASCIO for just over twelve years. Part of my responsibility as deputy executive director is overseeing our publications process. NASCIO releases several publications every year on a bevy of topics (e.g. cyber, AI, data, workforce, to name a few) and our policy team is constantly coming up with new ideas. But with a small (six-person) policy team, who writes these publications in addition to speaking at conferences, holding webinars, testifying in front of state legislatures and a whole host of other responsibilities, how do we manage this process?

First and foremost, we stay in our lane. People come to us with all kinds of ideas for joint publications or surveys and, while we do entertain some, many are not within our scope. I also frequently hear “NASCIO should write about this or that…” and sometimes I get good ideas from crowdsourcing, but I still have to make sure we are in our lane. How do we stay in our lane and know our scope, you might ask? We religiously stick to what our members’ priorities are. We formally ask them via our State CIO Top 10 survey and yearly State CIO Surveys.

For example, in our 2024 State CIO Survey, we asked our members several questions on enterprise architecture (a favorite topic for anyone reading this, I’m sure). After looking at the results, we knew we needed to dig further and launched a series which builds upon our 25+ year research on the topic. Another example, in the 2025 State CIO Top 10, IT accessibility made the Top 10 for the first time in the history of us producing the list. We knew this was likely because of the DOJ final rule on web accessibility and mobile apps for public entities. We spun up a working group for our state members to help them work through the ruling and have and will produce content this entire year leading up to the first deadline (April 2026 for all public entities with a population of 50,000).

Before I wrap up, let me circle back to Schoolhouse Rock. In the early 1980s, Schoolhouse Rock produced a four-part series on computers. Did you watch it? I get a kick out of looking at some of the titles and content and see how much has changed in the world of information technology and how much really hasn’t in the 40 years since this series was released. The same is true with associations and association management. In the 55+ years that NASCIO has been in existence and nearly 30 years that AMR has been around, we have seen much change. But our mission remains the same: to help our members adapt to changes and stay relevant.

Are you a board member or executive looking for help with your association? Contact AMR today and let us help your association change the world like we do for NASCIO and all of our client partners.