Introduction
Welcome to Open Navigator - an AI-powered platform that analyzes municipal meeting minutes and financial documents to identify policy opportunities for advocacy.
Every dataset, standard, and research source used in this platform is properly cited with complete attribution, licenses, and BibTeX references.
View Complete Citations & Data Sources - Academic research (MeetingBank, LocalView, Council Data Project, City Scrapers), Government data (U.S. Census, NCES, IRS), Civic tech standards (OCD-ID, Popolo, Schema.org, CEDS, OMOP CDM), Nonprofit data (ProPublica, Every.org, Findhelp), Church & congregation data (ARDA, HIFLD, National Congregations Study), Enterprise tech partnerships (Microsoft, Google, AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, Salesforce), and more.
👋 Choose Your Path
This documentation is organized by audience. Click the section that best describes you:
📊 Policy Makers & Advocates
I want to:
- Hold governments accountable
- Analyze meeting minutes and budgets
- Track nonprofit spending
- Find advocacy opportunities
🛠️ Developers & Technical Users
I want to:
- Install and configure the platform
- Scrape meeting data
- Deploy to production
- Contribute to development
Platform Scale
Open Navigator provides access to comprehensive data from 5 states:
All data is 100% free and public - no subscriptions or API fees required.
🎯 Top 5 Use Cases
These are the most powerful ways to use Open Navigator:
📊 1. Hold Governments Accountable
The Problem: Cities and school boards claim priorities in meetings but don't fund them.
The Solution: Compare meeting transcripts with budget line items to expose gaps between rhetoric and reality.
Data Used: MEETING, BUDGET, JURISDICTION, TOPIC
🗺️ 2. Find Policy Windows for Advocacy
The Problem: Advocates miss critical moments when governments are receptive to change.
The Solution: Track meeting sentiment, budget cycles, and legislation timing to identify when to act.
- Budget discussion: April 15 (2 weeks away)
- Sentiment: +0.65 (favorable toward policy)
- Similar cities: 3 passed related ordinances
Data Used: OPPORTUNITY, SENTIMENT, DATE_DIMENSION, METRIC_VIEW
🏛️ 3. Track Nonprofit Effectiveness
The Problem: Donors can't verify if nonprofits deliver on their mission.
The Solution: Combine Form 990 financial data with service delivery data and meeting citations.
- Revenue: $2.5M (Form 990)
- CEO Salary: $450K (18% of revenue)
- Program spending: 42% (below 65% standard)
- Meeting citations: 0 (not mentioned in city meetings)
Data Used: NONPROFIT, DONATION, CONSTITUENT, PROGRAM_DELIVERY
🗣️ 4. Analyze Public Sentiment & Debate
The Problem: It's hard to know how communities really feel about policies.
The Solution: Extract sentiment from meeting transcripts, public comments, and video debates.
- Public comments: 127 speakers
- Sentiment breakdown: 58% against, 35% for, 7% neutral
- Board vote: 6-1 to require masks
Data Used: MEETING, VIDEO, OFFICIAL, SENTIMENT, VOTE_EVENT
🎓 5. Compare Education Spending Across Districts
The Problem: Parents don't know if their school district spends money efficiently.
The Solution: Benchmark per-pupil spending, administrative costs, and outcomes across similar districts.
| District | Per-Pupil | Admin % |
|---|---|---|
| Your District | $18,500 | 24% |
| Similar District A | $14,200 | 12% |
| Similar District B | $13,800 | 11% |
Data Used: JURISDICTION, BUDGET, DEMOGRAPHICS, METRIC_VIEW
These use cases are powered by a comprehensive data model with 40+ entities including jurisdictions, meetings, budgets, nonprofits, officials, videos, and more.
View Complete Data Model ERD - Interactive diagram with all entity relationships
📊 What Data We Integrate
Open Navigator combines multiple free, public data sources:
- 📄 Meeting Minutes: 1,000+ municipalities with full transcripts and videos
- 📺 Video Channels: 50+ state legislature YouTube channels
- 💰 Financial Data: Complete budget and Form 990 coverage
- 🗺️ Geographic Coverage: All 50 states, 3,000+ counties and cities
- 🏛️ Nonprofits: 3M+ organizations with Form 990 financial data
- 🗳️ Elections: Ballots, candidates, results, polling data
- ✅ Fact-Checking: Claims verification from trusted sources
See Data Sources Overview for complete details.
Quick Start
Visit Developer Documentation for installation and setup instructions.
For production deployment options, see:
Next Steps
For Policy Makers
Learn how to find advocacy opportunities and track government accountability.
🛠️ For Developers
Install the platform, configure scrapers, and deploy to production.