Will Council Items Ever Be Online?
Amongst the things mentioned in a recent Amanda Fritz post is the latest revision to the City’s rules for sidewalks (in essence the latest iteration of a de facto sit-lie ordinance) and the fact that she “can’t find it posted on the City’s web site”.
Since the City first moved to its centralized and unified website, PortlandOnline, it’s been claimed by the City Auditor’s office — again and again — that their plan was to make sure that items on forthcoming Council agendas were made available electronically.
That launch of PortlandOnline was a whopping three and a half years ago, and it still hasn’t happened.
Digging around, the earliest public reference I could find (I’m still digging through my archive of old Portland Communique email) was in a comment from Gary Blackmer on Portland Communique back in December of 2004:
We are working to get more links in our agenda to digital documents in advance of Council meetings, but first we are trying to put the finishing touches on our electronic archives system, E-files. That will reduce the required work steps because we have a very tight timeline: all agenda items in by Thursday 5pm and the agenda and materials available Friday afternoon for Wednesday morning Council.
We are eager to insert those links but we’re a little ahead of the machinery right now. The idea of an agenda blog hadn’t occurred to us. I’ll put it on our IT wishlist!
Now, the Efiles system (offline as I write this) is pretty interesting. Technically part of the Stanley Parr Archives and Records Center, I’ve used Efiles before, to track down photographs of The Great Light Way for posting to Portland Histories.
But, still, December 2004 — when Blackmer posted that comment — was two years ago. And we still don’t have links from the online Council agenda to the actual documents, proposals, or ordinances being discussed.