Why is this Important?

Transcription

1 PUBLIC MEETING VIDEO STREAMING & OPEN GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: Why is this Important? I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them Thomas Jefferson John Remmler, Vice President Software Development john.remmler@iqm2.com IQM2 White Paper 90-D Raynor Avenue Ronkonkoma, NY

2 THE IMPORTANCE OF A PUBLIC MEETING VIDEO STREAMING AND THE EFFICIENCIES THEY BRING TO GOVERNMENT. The public meeting process has been a staple and hallmark of our democratic process since our countries founding. Unfortunately, as our country has grown and both our government and people s lives have become more complicated we seemed to have lost much of our focus on Open Government. Over the last few years the advent of improved internet streaming technology has enabled forward thinking public sector entities to enhance their public meeting processes and citizen information services. Through the power of the Internet these communities have taken steps to build citizen trust by helping our government process return to where it once was; creating a venue that empowers citizens to make themselves aware of the critical decisions being made by the folks who they have commissioned to facilitate their interests. When implemented the correct way, internet video streaming for public meetings removes both geographic and time constraints. In essence they are enabling their citizens to again be engaged in the decision making process. That being said there are a lot of misconceptions regarding video streaming for public meetings. Many public sector stakeholders; often the elected officials themselves are not familiar enough with technology to understand that the benefits are actually derived from the software functionality behind the actual streaming. They may be familiar with YouTube or something similar and believe that public meeting video streaming is just about watching a video of themselves during the meeting. This is not the case. In order to implement a public meeting video streaming solution that allows for live and VOD streaming while also creating efficiencies for both the public and internal stakeholders there are a number of factors that should be considered IQM2, Inc. 1

3 Components and Challenges Let s explore some of the challenges and components associated with launching a video streaming solution that can be accessed by thousands of citizens simultaneously with the functionality to allow them to locate the information they are looking for: 1. How do I Capture the Video & Audio? 2009 IQM2, Inc. 2

4 This will require you to have a streaming encoder with the requisite software that is smart enough to stop and start predicated on the meeting schedule and length. Please see graphic below that depicts the elements associated with this process. Companies who specialize in public meeting automation typically will supply you with an encoder with the software configured to address your structure. There should not be a cost to this unless you are looking for a laptop version. 2. What kind of Cameras do I need? Any camera will do (the audio quality is actually more important). Unless your board meetings are contenders for Americas Funniest Videos, citizens will quickly tune out if they can t hear or understand the conversation. The video is very important but doesn t need to be as high quality as the audio IQM2, Inc. 3

5 Your camera setup can be as simple or sophisticated as you want. Typically this has no real impact on the video streaming solution except for the quality of the actual videography. The Encoder PC will typically take any standard output (digital or analog) and stream it. For organizations looking to get up and running with low cost, a simple single camera setup is suitable. Some customers simply mount a single camera from their local electronics store on a tripod or a wall in a key position in the meeting room. For organizations willing to incur the additional cost a setup with multiple cameras and a switching station (like the Sony Anycast) will provide a more polished look to the final video but will also require someone to operate and switch between the cameras. As a third option, multi camera options exist that will automatically pan and zoom based on microphone use without an operator. Ultimately the audio should come from your existing meeting room s audio setup. You will get a much better end product by taking the audio from your wired microphones than from the video equipment. 3. What Platform should I use? Two major platforms are typically used today; Microsoft Windows Media and Adobe Flash. The Windows Media platform is superior in many ways including: better compression, stream replication capabilities, multi bitrate support, WMS ships with Windows Server, freely downloadable encoder, a wider availability of tools and more. The one key advantage that Adobe Flash has over the Windows Media is that the Flash Player is already widely installed on non Windows computers, while a plug in would have to be downloaded for Windows Media on these non Windows systems. With Microsoft Silverlight now available this has quickly becoming less important IQM2, Inc. 4

6 4. How do I handle Bandwidth Bottlenecks? This is an integral component for live streaming of public meetings. There are very few organizations in this space that have a content delivery network sophisticated enough to ensure federal/state or local entities do not encounter bandwidth issues. While many organizations neglect to focus on it when making a decision, the content delivery network utilized by your partner of choice is critical. For example, our content delivery network is comprised of 75 data centers each containing thousands of servers and over one million T 1 s which is the same structure utilized by companies like Google and MSN. To our knowledge most of the people in the public meeting space choose not to incur the cost for this type of redundancy and service; yet is it is very important you inquire about this. The diagram below illustrates below the live streaming band with challenges faced by an organization using a T1 connection IQM2, Inc. 5

7 5. How will this impact our Internal Network? By utilizing a streaming network provider (like IQM2) the impact of streaming to the public or outside of your network is minimal. However, as streaming becomes more widely adopted at organizations you typically see an increase of internal viewers watching the meetings from their offices. As this increases the same problem can bottleneck your internet bandwidth but just in the reverse direction. This is where a Stream Replicator can be introduced to offload and handle the streaming for all of the internal viewers. The software has to be smart enough and configurable to automatically direct outside traffic to your streaming provider but direct internal traffic to the stream replicator. Many solutions ignore this aspect of streaming or make it a manual process and confuse the users with multiple sites IQM2, Inc. 6

8 Multicasting is another thing that can help reduce the impact on your internal network for internal viewers. Typically for each computer accessing the video stream a separate network connection is made to the server ( Unicast ). This causes a bottleneck and wasted bandwidth. By enabling multicasting on your network the video stream effectively gets routed to the viewers that tune in and only a single stream needs to be broadcast. The network routers and switches do the heavy lifting and copy the stream to any location it is requested. The network equipment has to be capable of this. 6. How do I Link and time stamp Agenda Items to the video? This utility should be a core requirement for any video streaming software you choose to deploy. It should also be very easy for a user with limited computer experience to use. This is a very powerful community enhancement application as it empowers both residents and internal stakeholders to watch the parts of the meeting they are interested in through a simple click from any location they choose (home, work etc). They can take part in the government process without re arranging their busy schedules IQM2, Inc. 7

9 More sophisticated software like ours actually links items historically and by topic so that each time these topics are addressed at a meeting they can be watched and followed as a single topic to ensure full visibility into the decision process IQM2, Inc. 8

10 7. How do Citizens access the streamed meetings/event? Higher end video streaming software solutions will furnish a Citizen Self Service Web Portal that looks and feels like your web site for optimum citizen experience. They simply click on the website. When managed correctly all the agenda, minutes and video are linked and available for access. The portal should also have strong search capabilities; allowing interested parties to pull up topics they are interested in. This is also a very attractive feature for elected officials and internal stakeholders. Additionally, the portal should enable Citizens or stakeholders to sign up and indicate the topics that are of interest to them which will result in proactive notification. The advent and popularity of Social Networking applications has enabled more sophisticated companies like IQM2 to deploy features that are even more far reaching and accommodating for citizens IQM2, Inc. 9

11 8. How do I incorporate my Minutes? This is a very critical topic when it comes to efficiency and functionality. Firstly, we highly suggest that any solution you deploy has an agenda parser software module that allows you, via a click, to download the agenda topics into a Minutes Maker automation tool. The Minutes Maker with Agenda Parser functionality is a critical. This type of software sophistication enables organizations to reduce the amount of time associated with minute s transcription and posting by up to 90%. For example, we have clients who have their meeting videos time stamped and posted with their complete minutes within 20 minutes of the conclusion of the meeting IQM2, Inc. 10

12 9. Who owns the data? The sound business model is to ensure that should you determine you no longer wish or are able to pay your annual maintenance you should be entitled to own and have access to your data in the structure you have paid for. Please ask any solution provider What happens to my data and access to the software if we stop doing business. 10. Should I use One Company for Agenda Automation and Video Streaming? This is an important consideration and we are somewhat biased since to our knowledge IQM2 is the only Meeting Management System MMS that has one seamless software application that automates the entire public meeting process from agenda/minutes creation, work flow and approval through video streaming, electronic voting and meeting follow up automation. That being said we can share with you the pragmatic side of the decision as conveyed to us by CIO s and Technology Heads. In all cases, public sector CIO s have shared with us that they would never deploy a multi vendor software solution when the same solution is available as one application from one vendor. They state that there are too many integration issues not mention upgrade concerns and the ever troubling messy vendor divorce problems which have been prevalent in our space. Secondarily and as importantly is the process side. Automating the process with one software solution leads to one database and the streamlined transfer of data from one step in the process to the next. Ostensibly our clients advise us it just makes sound business sense. Doing more with less while making things less complicated IQM2, Inc. 11

13 11. How big of a project and how costly is the implementation of public meeting video streaming? Our earlier point about how the real power of public meeting video streaming lies in the sophistication and ease of use of the software is the answer. The actual implementation should be quick and painless. Done the correct way, implementation basically consists of connecting the encoder devices to the camera equipment and configuring the Citizen Web Portal. Unfortunately, a few organizations were successful in convincing many municipalities that this required large and costly professional services and project management engagements. Part of this stems from the inefficient way they have chosen to stream and the need for deploying somewhat dated processes; the other part is that the municipalities, understandably, did not fully drill down on what is actually entailed. Fortunately we have been seeing many public CIO s start to realize the value is in the software and they want to use their dollars to pay for functionality and ease of use; not inflated and unnecessary implementation costs. One rule of thumb; if the video streaming software and process cannot be configured and deployed remotely then you are either overpaying for implementation or looking to deploy an inferior offering. The only real training that needs to occur in the Video Streaming space is teaching the applicable staff member how to use the Minutes Maker tool to generate their minutes and index to the video. With the right software this is not difficult and should be able to be accomplished by any novice computer user. Summary We hope this quick overview was helpful. We are dedicated to facilitating open government, transparency and efficiency in the public sector and strongly urge you to take a step forward and deploy technology that enables you to accomplish both. Please join the 21 st century; we all need to do more with less and automation of manual and redundant public meeting processes helps you accomplish this while also saving money. What a great combination. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to help and will be delighted to offer any assistance we can; with both a smile and congenial conversation IQM2, Inc. 12

14 About the Author John Remmler is the Vice President of Software development for IQM2, Inc. a software company specializing in public and formal Meeting Management Solutions from agenda/minutes automation through video streaming. IQM2, Inc works with Federal/State Agencies, Municipalities, Educational Institutions and Tribal Councils to help them realize time and cost gains by deploying software applications that automate the critical public and formal meeting process. For additional white papers and information, please visit the IQM2 website at IQM2, Inc. 13