Being Nerdy About Los Angeles: Now Much Easier

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post stated that the Information Technology Agency launched the feature.

On Monday, the city's Office of the City Clerk launched a new and impressive website tool called the Council File Management System making Los Angeles city government more accessible than it was before. Every working day at City Hall, at City Council or in a committee meeting, motions are passed, presented or otherwise have some sort of action taken on them. Following actions on a particular motion used to be pretty laborious where you would have to check the website daily.

With the new system, once you catch wind of something presented that interests you, let's say last Friday's motion to extend the Red Line Subway to 3:00 a.m., you can now subscribe via RSS or E-mail to get notices every time there's an update to the progress of that motion.

Madeline Paguio, who oversees E-Government and web services for ITA, said that only a dozen people have signed up so far (this writer included), but that's without any announcements to the public. "We encourage people to use the RSS and e-mail subscription feature so they can follow government proceedings much more closing," she said over the phone with LAist.

As for more exciting future improvements down the line (and that could mean some time from now), Paguio said there is a directive for ITA and the Office of the City Clerk to create a way to subscribe to Council and Committee agendas by keyword in the Early Notification System, which currently has around 55,000 subscriptions to receive City Council and committee agendas. With a keyword subscription, someone can subscribe to words or phrases like "subway" and get notified any time an agenda carries that word.