2019-08-06 Services & Organisation Committee Agenda

SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                 6 AUGUST 2019


Overall, the system has operated well. There have been one or two technical “dropouts” but
these have been addressed quickly with minimal coverage lost. In particular, the sound system
appears to work well although all participants need to remember to speak clearly in order to
ensure that residents are able to hear on either the live stream or subsequent video. The only
significant sound quality issue arose when we added a conference call to enable a Councillor to
attend the Ordinary meeting on 18 July. For reasons unknown at this stage, adding the
conference call significantly impacted on the sound quality of the recording of that particular
meeting. Technical staff are investigating why that occurred to overcome any future issues.

Since we have commenced the live streaming/videoing, we have held an offsite Council meeting
at Cooran. Due to connectivity issues, it was not possible to live stream that meeting but we were
able to video and subsequently upload a video of that meeting. The issue of live streaming offsite
Council meetings was identified in my report to Council in December 2018. As each of our two
annual offsite Council meetings are held in different locations across the Shire, our ability to
record good sound and vision will depend on each location but the intent will be to record these
Council meetings and to upload the video the following day. There is an additional cost for these
meetings with ICT technical staff being required to assist with system set up and monitoring
during the offsite Council meeting.

One of the issues identified in my report to Council in December 2018, was concerns raised by
staff in relation to their privacy. We have addressed this by ensuring that the location of the
camera does not, where possible, capture staff other than the CEO and Executive Team.

In researching the introduction of live streaming and video recording, Council will recall that the
CEO researched the experience at other Councils. There were two key elements in relation to
the feedback from other Councils. The first was the importance of ensuring that there is good
“sound” quality and this has been achieved with the current system we are using. The second
was that based on experience elsewhere, there would be an initial high level of interest in
watching the videos but that over time, this would plateau with occasional spikes for “hot issues”
that may be debated within the Council.

Our viewer statistics are set out below. On the YouTube platform, it is not possible to identify IP
addresses so we are unable to establish how many of these views are Council staff. Anecdotally,
the CEO is aware that many Council staff watch proceedings either to get a better understanding
of the Council decision making process or to monitor when their report is coming up for
discussion/debate. Perhaps the best example to date is when Council was considering an
emissions issue and no one present at the meeting had the answer to a question raised,
however, a few minutes later a staff member popped in to the Council meeting to provide the
answer as they had been watching the debate on the live stream.

 Date                  Meeting                           Views
 14 February 2019      Special                                417
 18 February 2019      General Committee                      230
 21 February 2019      Ordinary                               301
 7 March 2019          Special                                102
 18 March 2019         General Committee                    1,236
 21 March 2019         Ordinary                               276
 15 April 2019         General Committee – part 1             130
                       General Committee – part 2             158
 18 April 2019         Ordinary                               363
 13 May 2019           General Committee                       92
 16 May 2019           Ordinary                                85


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