To be able to use an action to change the order of items in a list

Description of the enhancement required:
To be able to use an action to change the order of items in a list.

An example of the enhancement:
I have a list, FRED, which is populated from a SQL query containing an ORDER BY clause. However, new items are always inserted at the end of the list (or rather, at the end of the items within the relevant parent item). The field I want to sort the list by is available in the data so I'd like to be able to run an action to sort the items within my list according to that field. I've tried creating a module view that orders the items by the relevant field but when I insert from this view it has no effect.

I can sort the list manualy but that doesn't solve the problem because it doesn't create an action that I can include in my processes. I want to be able to do it from the Import button, which would support this type of automation.

How would it help the business process:
This information is mostly given above, except to say that the reason I want to sort the items is that I'd like them to appear in their logical order in the page selector. It's simple enough in module views on dashboards, because I can apply a sort to the views, but page selectors always list items in their native order. I also don't want to have to delete the items and then reinsert them because there's too much data attached to them that would be lost.