Heidi Kraak
Latrobe City Council will continue to broadcast council meetings to the public after a 12-month trial of live streaming on Facebook.
Council began broadcasting meetings to improve transparency, following the release of a Victorian Ombudsman’s report investigating transparency in local government decision making in 2016 which encouraged councils to increase public accessibility to decision-making processes.
Council will change the method of broadcasting from Facebook to the council website, however, will maintain a link from its Facebook page to improve accessibility.
Other options to improve viewer experiences will be explored such as the use of graphics and options to minimise interruptions.
Speaking at last week’s council meeting, Cr Dan Clancey said the broadcasting trial had been “well received” by the community.
“We have opened the door and said ‘come inside’, we’ve opened the door for people to attend from home,” he said.
“The comments we’ve gotten back have been ‘thanks for letting us in, it’s not that interesting’, but for some people it is interesting.
“It gives people the opportunity to stay at home on a cold winters night to watch how our decisions are made.”
Cr Clancey said the live streaming gave people an opportunity to interact via the comments section.
“We also have been able to capture the comments that are happening on Facebook,” he said.
“Sometimes you get a bit of a whack … but there is always someone prepared to tell us what we are doing.
“We capture [those] comments and put it in our systems. It is another way we can interact with our community.”
Latrobe City council broadcasted meetings have been viewed by almost 30,000 people since July 2017.
South Gippsland Shire Council will also continue to live stream its meetings to the public after reviewing the service recently.
Since the implementation of live-streaming council meetings the live stream has had 2,838 views, an overall watch time of 42,241 minutes and an average view of 12.49 minutes.
Baw Baw Shire Council haven’t been operating live streaming services for a whole year as of yet, however, the broadcast reaches almost 91 live viewers each month and about 118 archived viewer per month.
