Summary

1. Improve notification and discoverability of what's on city council meeting agendas.

2. Allow people to comment on upcoming agenda items.

3. Provide a way to track issues over time.

Free knowledge like this doesn't just help, it promote dmecroacy. Thank you.

Implementation

City of Portland data (all XML, not yet available)

meetings feed: A feed of city council meetings, each entry linking to the details of a given week's meeting. updated 4pm every Friday. eg: at 4pm Friday, the newest item in the feed will be the upcoming Monday meeting's agenda, and the previous Monday's meetings.
agenda feeds: The feed of items for a given meeting's agenda.
future discussion feed: A feed of general topics planned for discussion at future meetings.

Data storage and access

Application

web app for voting/commenting on individual agenda items
notifications via twitter: an account that updates when the new agenda is available, linking to input pages

Public should be able to comment on each agenda item

Implementation approaches

Long term project, low priority for now.

timestamp in video per item
what action was taken
tracking item relations for resolution
if an agenda item concerns previous agenda items, link it, and mechanically expose it

Council meeting agendas contain the following high-level parts, each composed of individual agenda items.

communications to council: citizens have 3 minutes to talk about whatever they want
time-certain items (has owner, vote)
consent agenda - 100% covered unless pulled (has owner, vote)
regular agenda - mostly covered, can vote to address later (has owner, vote)