On May 11th 2010, Cornwall Council entered the world of webcast by showing live a meeting of the full council. This as I have said before, was a massive step to open up the council for the world to see. It met with some resistance, but now this has all but disappeared.

Webcasting started with only the full council, but now it has been rolled out to Cabinet meetings and the Strategic Planning Committee. It has also been used on an ad-hoc bases for other important meetings. Sadly, webcasting is not in use for all planning committees, or the various scrutiny committees. To look back at my term of office, getting webcasting implemented is one of my top five achievements.

For the last two years, the viewing figures has grown to something I only could had wished for. For the period of:

• April 2011 to March 2012: Live views – 14,359 and archive views – 19,193
• April 2012 to Jan 2013: Live views – 18,400 and 119,768 and archive views

As you can see the increase in people watching live and more impressively, the archived meetings has increased massively . It just goes to show that people are interested in what the council does. A few meeting figures jump out, as on the 16th October 2012, 4,489 people watched live and 7,960 viewed the archive. This meeting was the No-confidence Motion. Another, a full council budget meeting attracted 1,905 live and 8,730 archived views.

However, there could be a sting in the tail. As post the budget decision and the large and avoidable cuts to the comms, strategy and localism budgets could see webcasting being stopped, or at a minimum reduced to only full council.

That would be a massive backward step in making the council more open. It would make it harder for the public to see their Councillor and council in action and more importantly vote at these meetings. It would also harm the council’s reputation for being one of the leading local authorities in making the council more accessible.

Anyone who follows this blog will know I am a firm, if not a little obsessive believer in Cornwall Council be as open as possible in the way it conducts it’s business. This sometimes not only involves changing procedures, but changing mindsets. The later, is generally the most difficult and frustrating part. One way the Council has been more open is in the introduction of web-castings of firstly full Council, and more recently Cabinet meetings.

Previously I have said the web-casting of meetings should not just stop at full Council and Cabinet, but we should also broadcast as many meetings as possible. This includes meetings like planning and those which have a strategic nature to the people of Cornwall, as not everyone wants to, or is able to travel to County Hall to watch a meeting.

Last time the expansion was tried it failed because of the misunderstanding on costs and other misconceptions. I do understand we can’t just have a unlimited budget for this, but even if we don’t broadcast live, we could still record and make those recordings available in the archive via the main Cornwall Council web-page.

This time I was hopeful that those issues raised before had been clarified and would not be brought up again. So after a short debate a vote was taken and the Council voted in favour (phew) of expending web-casting. A further step forward would be allowing the public to also engage more by social media during meetings, but if I am honest this might take more work in convincing the non-believers of this being a good idea.

The topic of web-casting will be coming back to the main meeting of Cornwall Council very soon, most probably at the end of March. The last time this topic was brought before Council it ended up in what can be best described as a farce. (Click HERE to refresh yourselves). From how the vote went last time, it seemed like a lot of Councillors did not/do not want to open up more meetings to the public.

My personal view is that all meetings should be web-casted. Maybe not live, but recorded and made available on Cornwall Council’s website. Maybe in time this will happen. The trick is now convincing those Councillors unsure (or worried how they would be seen) to extend the current scheme to take in other meetings. For a start, I believe Strategic Planning should be web-casted live just because of the strategic nature of the Committee, and most of these meetings are held at New County Hall. It makes it very difficult for people to travel the large distance to see how a certain topic is dealt with.

As to how the public feel about Council meetings being web-casted I have not had one complaint. In fact, most people said ‘well done’ and ‘now we can see what Councillors are doing and saying on our behalf’. I believe this is backed up by the viewing figures since May 2010.

The total viewing figures for the last 10 months are 46,957. This is for both full Council and Cabinet and is made up of live and archive is viewings. The further breakdown is live 677 and archived 40186. I believe these figures prove the Council was right (with a little persuasion from Cllrs Long, Rowe, Double and me with the original motion).

Let’s hope more meetings will be web-casted, but that will rest on those non-believers changing their minds and voting in favour of an expanded program.

The Web-casting Working Group met today to look at how things are going, and to prepare a report to full Council in February. Whilst the viewing figures will not give concern to the makers of Coronation Street they are still pretty impressive in Council terms. 

These figures are that are the total of live and archive viewings for 2010

Council (main meeting) 3rd December – Total =2920
Cabinet 17th November – Total = 661
Cabinet 27th October – Total = 5915
Council (main) – 7th September – 216 (live) – 473 (archive) Total = 701
Council (main) – 27th July – Total = 2445
Council (main) – 15th June -Total = 14715
Council (main) – 11th May -Total = 10992

It is hoped that other meetings could be web-casted when this report with any further recommendations are presented to Cornwall Council. I really believe in allowing broadcasting of our meetings has made the Council more open and accessible.

On Tuesday Council Council full meeting was broadcast live on the web for the second time. The Councillors present seemed more relaxed about it after last month.

The live viewing figures were not as good as the previous meeting, but its the archived meeting views that really count due to people working might not be able to watch, and so will wait till they have the time. Another good point to the archived file is that you don’t have to watch all the meeting, but can click on the “Index Points” to go to an Agenda item, or click on “Speakers” to see what a Councillor had to say.

Anyway, here is the link to the Archived File for you to watch.

Here are the comments from the BBC reporter Graham Smith on how he sees the web-cast.

On Tuesday 15th June it will be time for another full Cornwall Council meeting. This also will be the second live webcast of this meeting. Hopefully the few little niggles that happened at the last meeting will have been rectified.

Just before this meeting takes place I thought I would give you the viewing figures from the first meeting. I have to say they are pretty impressive, and so I am told one of the highest viewing figures of any Council on launch.

1225 watched this meeting live
2225 have watched the archived file

These are all external viewing figures, and do not include any views made internally on the CC network.

(figures collated up to the 1st June 2010)

Here are the Official viewing figures from Cornwall Council’s first Webcast meeting

Feed back as from 12 May at 1pm

1225 Live Views (All external)

671 Archived Views

More than 100 comments from Twitter

Poll Results as of 09:30 am 12th May

Do you support Cornwall Councils initiative to make meetings more open, transparent and accessible though webcasting? 

Yes           176
No            1
Undecided  5

Total       182