Repeat reminder: be sure to clip the previous post, or excerpt what you're referring
to in the body of your email.
Constant reminder: our rules allow pointed disagreement but require respectful
discussion.
--
Thanks for taking time to send us your comments. We are in the middle of a
project to redesign how Council and other governance information is
published to the Web. Comments like yours make a valuable contribution to
our efforts.
Deb Parker
Debra Parker
Web Site Manager
Information Technology Services
City of Minneapolis
www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Shilepsky [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 6:10 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Cc: Pai, Vaman M; Keefe, Merry L; Hrncir, Jan D; Parker, Debra A
Subject: Re: City Council actions on the City Web page
I want to thank everyone who directed me to the source of information
below; but let me make the following suggestions for improvement.
Scads of 40 page PDF files are far from convenient. I have a CD of
Oracle instruction manuals in PDF format, and find it barely useable.
Remember that old distinction between "data" vs. "information?"
Much more useable City Council information would be HTML based documents
that were searchable, and that used hypertext links to separate summary
information from the details. Preferably, the City would maintain a
web-accessable database table that might have such fields as:
Date of vote; Short Title; Category; Passed? (y/n); Yea Count; Nay
Count; Absent Count; Sponsors; CM's voting Yes; CM's voting Nay; Absent
CM's; hyperlink to an abstract; hyperlink to a full description of the
item.
I'd have to think about how I would handle this database's One-to-many
relationships (e.g., Sponsors, Yea and Nay voters; Categories). But in
any case I would have the database be searchable at least by keywords in
the title, by date range, and by categories. The hypertext drill downs
would allow a citizen to get the details, without requiring her or him
to optically scan 40 pages of legalese to find the votes they are
interested in.
It would be interesting to hear suggestions from the City for Neighbors
researchers about how the City Council information could have been
arrayed to make their job of preparing a scorecard easier.
Alan Shilepsky
Downtown
"Pai, Vaman M" wrote:
>
> City Council actions are available on the City's Web site (
> www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us ). You may also choose to go directly to the
> following link to see Council actions (without having to travel Downtown)
>
> http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/clerk/actions/
>
> Each document is in PDF format -- to view it, you'll need the free Acrobat
> Reader <http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html>.
>
> Vaman Pai
> Communications Department
> City of Minneapolis
> 350 South 5th Street - Room 301M
> Minneapolis, MN 55415-1300
> 612.673.2123
> 952.365.6588 (pager)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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