OpenGov Data publishes several machine-generated text artifacts for each meeting. Each artifact has a different purpose.

VTT Transcript

The VTT transcript is the timestamped transcript output.

Use it when you want:

  • timestamps
  • caption-style transcript review
  • source alignment with the original recording
  • rough navigation by time

This is the closest text artifact to the transcription stage.

Sliced Transcript TXT

The sliced transcript is a plain-text version of the transcript produced during segmentation.

Use it when you want:

  • a readable raw-ish transcript
  • transcript text grouped by detected segments
  • an intermediate artifact between VTT and normalized text

This file may contain extra spacing, transcription artifacts, or segment boundaries.

Normalized Transcript

The normalized transcript is cleaned into sentence-per-line text.

Use it when you want:

  • easier reading than raw transcript output
  • text extraction
  • copy-and-paste review
  • comparing meeting content across files
  • input suitable for downstream machine processing

This is often the best transcript artifact for reviewing meeting text directly.

Meeting Events

Meeting Events are deterministic public-reference artifacts assembled from machine-generated meeting records.

Events may include:

  • decisions and votes
  • procedural actions
  • presentations and reports
  • discussions
  • public comments
  • proclamations and recognitions
  • attendance
  • supporting evidence
  • links to the corresponding time in the original recording

The Events Markdown file provides a readable meeting view. The Events JSON file preserves structured fields and machine provenance for downstream analysis and review.

Meeting Events may be incomplete, overlapping, or slightly redundant. They are not official minutes, legal records, or definitive proof that an action, vote, topic, or public comment was present or absent.

Summary

The summary is a generated meeting overview, when available.

Use it when you want:

  • a faster overview
  • agenda-item review
  • major discussion points
  • a starting point before reading the transcript or Meeting Events

Summaries are machine-generated and should be checked against the transcript and original recording before official use.

Important Note

All artifacts are machine-generated and may contain transcription, extraction, classification, grouping, or summarization errors. Important claims should be verified against the original public meeting recording.