Experiences with Video Streaming of Norwegian Local Government Meetings

Abstract

Video streaming of local government meetings offers transparency. After an experimental phase, video streaming has now become a regular service in several Norwegian municipalities. This paper describes the design, development and implementation of one such video streaming service for a consortium of twelve municipalities. One important goal of this project was to deliver rich user experience without putting additional workload on municipal administrators. Our solution is able to deliver multiple video streams originating from different video sources (cameras), and the user may choose which video streams to view. Video streams are stored and made available for later viewing. An administrative application facilitates linking items on the agenda to relevant video content. A search engine makes it possible to search for video content across municipal borders. The paper also reports on a recent survey conducted among initial users of the video streaming service. The results are discussed, and some areas of future research are proposed.