Enhanced Streaming Service will Soon Allow Citizens to View Commission Meetings and Other TV14 Programming on the Go

The Henry County Board of Commissioners approved a new contract to provide enhanced internet video streaming and search capabilities for Commission meetings and other Henry TV14 programming on the County website.  The action came at their regular meeting on Monday.
Henry County first began making the Commission meetings and other TV14 programming available live and on demand over the Internet in 2008 as a way to make local government as accessible as possible to citizens by getting into every home with an internet connection.  This new contract with Granicus, which had been the previous service provider as well, improves upon those capabilities by enabling citizens to view Commission meetings and other TV14 programming from anywhere at any time on their tablets and other mobile devices for the first time. 
The new service will also enable citizens to search for agenda items by keyword, thus simplifying the process and making it easier to review multiple meetings about similar topics.  Another new feature is the ability to share video via social media, expanding Henry County’s reach even farther.  This new functionality is expected to be available within the next five to six weeks.
“The taping and the ability to have live meetings where people can tune in and see them is important for transparency,” explained Commisioner Reid Bowman.  “They are able to watch on TV14 or bring it up on the internet, and see what is going on on their board without having to come down here.”
Granicus was selected through an extensive Request For Proposals (RFP) process to provide these services, which will actually be a savings to the County.  Despite adding all of these additional features, the annual contract amount of about $9,600 per year is approximately $4,500 less per year than what Henry County had been paying for the basic video streaming services.  Henry County has an option to renew the annual contract for four additional years, with a five year total not to exceed $57,900, which accounts for the possibility of needing to replace the Media Vault server, which stores the video files, at some point during the five year period.
To view Henry County Commission Meetings or other TV14 programming, including the weekly Update news program and Inside Out program that goes into greater depth on County government issues, please visit www.henrycounty-ga.org/henrytv14.

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