Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, reports that Richardson's city council is likely to begin making streaming video of council meetings available on the city's Web site beginning in August. Reader Sherri adds that council member John Murphy, in conversation after the council meeting, suggested that podcasts of the audio of council meetings might be available as early as next week.
This is all good news. If there was an issue that resonated with the electorate in the recent council election, it was transparency in government, with streaming video of council meetings the most requested symbol of improving transparency (that and an online checkbook). All of the candidates supported putting video of council meetings online, so it's good to see the new council quickly live up to what many considered an implicit promise.
Even though neither video nor audio of this week's council meeting was available online, Ian McCann did the next best thing by live-blogging the meeting via Twitter. Having a journalist tweeting highlights is great and will continue to be even after we get live broadcasts. Let's face it, there's a lot of dead time in a city council meeting. Having someone summarize is a great service and doing it in real time is even better, as it affords Twitter followers the opportunity to tune in when the debate gets interesting. Like when McCann reported the discussion about the costs of providing streaming video: "7-10K too much to set up cameras? Amir Omar says...'I've got a friend who could do it for a couple hundred bucks.'"
If others join the conversation, too, there's the potential of having the electorate play a significant role in council deliberations, not just play spectator. Maybe we need a Richardson hashtag like #cortx to collect all the chatter my feverish imagination predicts we'll have.
By the way, is streaming video the biggest issue facing Richardson? Of course not. But it's the right thing to do. And it's easy to do. It doesn't keep us from tackling other issues at the same time. Let's do it.
5 comments:
"If there was an issue that resonated with the electorate in the recent council election, it was transparency in government..."
Bull Cookies.
That agenda was driven by a loud minority. It "resonated" if all you did was show up at a few forums.
While council meetings being web cast aren't a bad thing they really do not increase transparency and nor has televising council meetings been a huge issue except by a vocal few.
Let's solve Richardson's real problems shall we?
Ed, you are right that streaming video is not the biggest issue facing the Council (one would think that the anticipated revenue shortfall might be more important to the voters), but all the Council members did promise to do something. As it turns out in the last 2 years since the previous campaign, software has made great strides, so the City staff (kudos to Michelle Thames and everyone who worked on it) was able to present much more interesting and citizen-friendly alternatives than were available at a reasonable price 2 years ago.
On a closely related subject, that of improving the posted Council agendas and putting prereading online, the City staff has not been letting the grass grow under their feet.
For some time now (since February, as far as I can see), the City staff has been putting out three files online for each City Plan Commission meeting:
- CPC (City Plan Commission) Agenda
- CPC Agenda Packet
- CPC Action Agenda
The CPC Agenda is a somewhat more verbose agenda than what the Council currently uses. Not only is the description of the item more 'descriptive', but the City staff member involved is identified, for ease of citizen access.
The CPC Agenda Packet is an electronic copy (often 5Meg in pdf) of most if not all the handouts to be given to the Plan Commission at their meeting. The City Council receives a very similar briefing book on the Thursday before each meeting or workshop.
The CPC Action Agenda is posted after the meeting and lists the action taken (i.e., the vote) on each agenda item.
You can see all this at City Plan Commission Agendas on the City website.
In last night's Council worksession, Michelle Thames stated that the staff was intending to do the same for the Council meetings as part of this transparency initiative. This will be a very welcome addition to the information about each meeting that will be more easily available to the public.
Many thanks are due to Bill Keffler, Michelle Thames, and all the City staff who participated in this trial run using the Plan Commission as a beta test for what they will roll out for the Council. Since they started this in February - before the City Council campaigns even started this spring - the City staff should be commended for thinking ahead and anticipating what the voters wanted and what the Council was going to do.
We would do well to remember this the next time that the gossip goes around that the City staffers are all overpaid and crooked...
Bill
"Anonymous" at 6/30/2009 10:20 PM, I'll grant you the real possibility that most voters didn't prioritize transparency as an issue. Given that only about 12% of eligible voters turned out at all, it's hard to make a case that *any* issue resonated with voters. But given all that, of the voters who were vocal and who did turn out at forums, and of the issues that candidates themselves raised, transparency in government did stand out from other issues.
P.S. Given that webcasting is on its way, we'll all be moving on to solving Richardson's "real problems" soon enough, unless some continue to bog us down in arguments claiming that webcasting meetings doesn't increase transparency and isn't a huge issue.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, thanks for updating us all on other efforts the city staff is taking to improve transparency. I believe this is not a one shot deal. All aspects of government should continuously improve the methods they use to communicate with residents and voters of Richardson. Like you say, technology is continuously improving. Our government should be, too.
Ed, yep, I quite agree, it's not a one shot deal, and the City knows this.
If nothing else, because of the nature of technology today, any single medium chosen for better communication of public information inherently limits the spread of that information. You understand:
"Let's do a webcast!" - but not everyone has broadband Internet access.
"Let's do it on cable!" - but a lot of people have the dish instead.
"Let's do an audio broadcast!" - hmmmn, this is better for dial-up users (video can be a hog), but reduces the user experience by not providing the video at the same time.
"Let's put it on the radio!" - actually, this has the broadest potential reach (I used to listen to Dallas council meetings on WRR all the time) - even to people in cars - but we don't have a radio station (do we? Does an RISD school have one, like Mesquite does?).
And the better the user experience (live or delayed video, audio, handouts, etc.), the more tied you are to a particular medium. We who live by the Internet sometimes are tempted to forget the number of voters who have no interest (or comfort) in using it.
So, as you so, this is clearly a first step, and the City may need to add or change media as technology and user requirements dictates...
Bill
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