Yemi Adewunmi is co-founder and COO of Plural.
Last August, I did some reporting on the confluence of technology, disability, and politics with a story on how Clear Ballot and Perkins Access are using technology in their work to make voting more accessible to everyone. In a nutshell, despite being woefully undervalued by the masses, the fact of the matter is conventional means of voting, whether by machine or paper ballot, are largely inaccessible to a not-insignificant swath of the citizenry. However often election officials, lawmakers, and political activists like to crow about how ostensibly everyone has the right to vote, the reality is voting is as much a privilege reserved for the able-bodied amongst us.
Of course, policy is the linchpin of voting. Like with the literal process of voting, keeping abreast of the issues isn’t exactly an accessible endeavor for people with disabilities. The team at Plural is cognizant of the issues here, which is why the startup builds what it describes on its website as an “easy-to-use policy tracking and collaboration tool” in solving the usability problem. The company’s software allows people to discover and monitor legislation as it moves through its various machinations, as well as organizes and distributes notes on said legislation to be shared.
“Plural is a policy-tracking platform that uses artificial intelligence to make policy creation more transparent, responsive and inclusive. It enables organizations to easily sift through the overwhelming amount of updates that happen during legislative sessions, making research smarter, faster and less expensive,” said Plural co-founder and chief operating officer Yemi Adewunmi in an interview with me last month conducted over email. “Its AI capabilities include flagging similar bills as ones that are already being tracked, notifying when a bill has momentum, notifying of changes to bill text and more.”
Adewunmi and her co-founder Damola Ogundipe began Plural in 2019, as what was then known as Civic Eagle. The origins of the company’s mission came about when Adewunmi and her team started pondering how it could apply technology towards making civic engagement more accessible (in both senses of the word) to everyone. In 2020, the company integrated Open States, an open-source data project covering state legislation, in an effort to apply technology to the policy-making process. For Adewunmi’s part, her interest dates back to her time as a public policy researcher and analyst in the New York State legislature. “I experienced firsthand the process of a bill becoming a law, and envisioned the use of advanced technology to make this process more efficient and accessible,” she said.
When asked about Plural’s raison d’être, Adewunmi explained it as creating “cutting-edge software that makes public policy data more accessible, discoverable, interpretable and collaborative.” This is important, she added, because policy is a dynamo, changing almost daily. Plural’s software essentially acts as a timesaver, insofar as the less time people spent researching bills can be better spent doing actual work: meeting with real people and championing for progress.
“I’m motivated by the opportunity that we have to leverage advanced technologies for good purposes. The public sector can find value in the efficiencies that smarter tools and data provide,” Adewunmi said. “As our society gets more and more complex, technology has the ability to get a clearer picture of what is evolving. Plural is just one example, but the opportunities are endless.”
At a technical level, Plural is yet another example of a company harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to enhance its product. As Adewunmi told me, Plural uses AI in order to help users form stronger connections to the bills they’re researching; on its site, the company touts its so-called homebrewed Legislative Intelligence Engine that powers its software. Adewunmi describes the technology as making information “accessible, user-friendly, and understandable.”
Echoing sentiments in the lede about members of the disability community finding inaccessibility in the voting process, Adewunmi told me marginalized communities have “the most to gain and lose in policy battles.” Thus, it’s crucially important underrepresented people have heightened awareness of the policy discourse happening around them. She pointed to the fact that, here in the United States, there exists a formidable nonprofit sector wherein marginalized people can feel included and represented. These organizations play an instrumental role in advocacy and helping shepherd a bill through the process as it evolves into becoming law.
“That’s why we are so passionate about what we’ve built at Plural. Our software has empowered advocacy organizations with important, fast-moving information about the policy topics they are advocating for,” Adewunmi said.
Feedback-wise, Plural is immensely popular with users. According to Adewunmi, users rave about the software’s ease-of-use. She cited the Center for Secure and Modern Elections using Plural’s product to “easily identify dozens of proposed legislation in 2021 that would restrict elections in numerous states,” which saved the Center hours of work—time that they used towards continued advocacy strategy. In a statement, Center deputy director Orlando Jones said in part they use Plural to “easily streamline our workflows, prioritize our focus, and use data to predict the viability of hundreds of bills across the country,” adding the tool helps them “organize bills by priority so that [the Center] can hone in on the right legislation to take action on.”
Looking towards the future, Adewunmi said the ultimate goal for Plural is to someday become “the leading policy intelligence platform globally.” The team has spent countless hours with policy professionals in an effort to understand their work and improve their workflows. Thus far, Adewunmi was happy to report the results have been very well-received.
“We’re excited to build connections with other bodies of governance to make policy data more accessible and useful for constituents,” she said.
