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Seattle Council Analysis

Making civic power visible

Status
Live & Analyzing
Launch Date
December 2024
Technology
GPT-4, Whisper AI, Custom NLP

Every day, decisions that shape Seattle's future happen in council chambers. We use artificial intelligence to make these conversations accessible, searchable, and understandable for every citizen.

Visit Seattle Council Analysis

The Problem

Municipal government operates in the shadows of complexity. Seattle City Council meetings run for hours, filled with procedural language, cross-references to ordinances, and nuanced political dynamics that require deep institutional knowledge to understand.

Citizens who want to stay informed face an impossible choice: spend dozens of hours each month parsing through meetings, or remain disconnected from decisions that directly impact their lives. This creates a democratic deficit where civic engagement becomes a privilege of those with time.

Our Solution

We transform dense civic proceedings into accessible insights. Using advanced natural language processing, we analyze every Seattle City Council meeting to extract key decisions, track policy developments, and surface the information that matters most to residents.

Our AI doesn't replace human judgment—it augments it. By automating the tedious work of information extraction and organization, we free citizens to focus on what matters: understanding and engaging with the issues that shape their community.

How We Work

01. Automated Collection

We monitor the Seattle Channel and official city repositories to automatically collect meeting recordings, agendas, and supporting documents as they become available.

02. Transcription & Processing

Audio is converted to text using state-of-the-art speech recognition, with speaker identification and timestamp alignment for precise reference.

03. Intelligent Analysis

Large language models analyze transcripts to extract summaries, track policy developments, and generate actionable civic engagement guidance.

04. Quality Assurance

Multiple validation layers ensure accuracy, including cross-model verification, factual consistency checks, and periodic human review of outputs.

What You Get

Executive Summaries

Clear, digestible overviews of each meeting's key decisions, voting outcomes, and next steps—turning hours of proceedings into minutes of reading.

Policy Deep Dives

Detailed analysis of proposed legislation, including context, stakeholder positions, potential impacts, and implementation timelines.

Civic Engagement

Actionable guidance on how to participate in democracy, including public comment opportunities, contact information, and upcoming deadlines.

Impact & Metrics

50+
Meetings Analyzed
200+
Hours Processed
1,000+
Policy Decisions
95%
Accuracy Rate
"Democracy works best when citizens are informed. Our goal is to remove the barriers between complex governance and public understanding."
— The Seattle Council Analysis Team