In an effort to make the procedure of more council meetings more transparent and obvious to the public, the council is planning to spend between £17,000 and £81,000 on the installation of new equipment in the Dean of Guild Court Room at the City Chambers so that meetings held there can be viewed online live. A report to be discussed at the full council meeting will detail the various options for the video and audio recording equipment needed for this.
The meetings held in the secondary committee room include the Transport and Environment Committee and the Planning Committee, and so the public will have the opportunity to see exactly what goes on there without leaving their homes. At present practically all council meetings are open to the public, but it is true to say that only a few Edinburgh residents are interested enough to go along to the City Chambers, even for the full council meeting which is held each month.
Webcasting was introduced into the main chamber in September last year, and all meetings held there since then have been filmed. The footage is stored online. 5,000 people have watched the meetings live and over 19,000 have watched the recordings of meetings. Unfortunately this has meant that one senior councillor Jeremy Balfour was also caught on camera at one of the Petition Committee meetings playing Solitaire on his iPad, which resulted in his having to make an abject apology for his behaviour. So what do you think? Is the webcasting service something you use?
Council Leader, Councillor Andrew Burns said:- “People in Edinburgh told us clearly that they wanted an open and transparent Council with greater scrutiny of our decisions. Extending the webcasting service is just one of the ways we hope to achieve this.
“It’s important the public have the opportunity to view and hear Council debates and see elected members making the decisions that affect them directly. Many of the biggest local issues are discussed at these meetings and by giving people direct, online access to the content of these will hopefully increase the public’s engagement with local government.”
The Lord Provost is photographed below at his inauguration in May 2012 before webcasting began. You can find out more about viewing the meetings on the council website here.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
