If you don't know much about Minneapolis and what government data is available to you, that's no surprise; it's somewhat difficult to find out, and requires reading through state statutes and city ordinances in order to know what you can request. That doesn't mean that the process of getting this data is any easier, unless you have experience with governmental processes.

Having become annoyed with a lack of transparency and open government data in Minneapolis, some friends and I are launching a project, OpenMinneapolis.org, to make data on government meetings, officials, elections and various processes more available to the public and private individuals. You'll even be able to check out attendance records for city council members, and know whether they're doing the job you elected them to do, as well as have access to meeting minutes in an open and usable format (in this case XML). Take a look at the announcement on OpenMinneapolis.org for more details...

We're already getting some press too, and have submitted a grant application to the Knight foundation, which you can go and vote on. :)