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Towndex

Motivation

Local government decisions significantly impact our lives but rarely make the news. Meeting minutes, forms, and other documents published by local governments are generally available online, but are often:

  • Dispersed across multiple websites
  • Dispersed across many pages of a website
  • Inconsistently organized and published
  • In PDF or Word format instead of HTML
  • Couched in bureaucratic or esoteric language

Towndex helps citizens learn about the business of local government by extracting, integrating, and presenting information from government documents in a way that’s browsable and searchable. A Towndex site can help answer questions like:

  • What issues were considered by the town government?
  • What decisions were made?
  • Who is involved? (people and organizations)
  • Which geographic areas of the town are affected?
  • How much money has been collected and expended?