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On Thursday, 15th November 2007, the eParticipation Summit took place. The purpose of this summit was to discuss the possibilities of eParticipation with a broad audience and to determine what is needed to seize the opportunities. Keynote speeches were given by Jacques Wallage, Tom Steinberg, and Steven Lenos. Various workshops covered existing initiatives and new possibilities.
Dialogic hosted the workshop on 'municipal councils 2.0'. This workshop included discussions on the preliminary results of a study on webcasting; the broadcasting of municipal council meetings or Provincial States meetings via the internet.
Currently, 67 out of the 443 municipalities in the Netherlands utilise online audiovisual reporting. This represents 15% of the total. The majority of municipalities use audio, with only ten municipalities using video broadcasts.
Audiovisual material is primarily viewed as a supplement to written reporting. A (matched pair) comparison was made between municipalities utilising online reporting and those that do not, revealing no difference in written reporting between these municipalities.
The significant advantage of audiovisual reporting is the immediate availability of reports after the meeting. Unfortunately, the quality of recordings is lacking in some cases, and the searchability of the material is not optimal.
The objectives for broadcasting meetings online vary per municipality; sometimes it is for archiving purposes, while in other cases, it is implemented to enhance public information. Municipalities looking to introduce online reporting must make a choice; should the focus be on archiving and the objectivity of information, or on improving public information delivery in a understandable manner?
The workshop also discussed the balance between an archiving function and an information provision function. According to some attendees, an 'informational layer' can be applied over the objective information, allowing the two forms of reporting not to conflict with each other. However, if video footage is edited into a summary to give residents a brief overview of a council meeting, this contradicts objective reporting.
The presentation can be found here. The full report will soon be available on this site. More information about the summit can be found on the website of the eParticipation summit.