LIHU‘E — Officials announced Tuesday that starting today the county will begin online streaming of Kaua‘i County Council meetings, Planning and Police commission meetings, and Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s weekly show, “Together We Can.” Kaua‘i joins the City and County of
LIHU‘E — Officials announced Tuesday that starting today the county will begin online streaming of Kaua‘i County Council meetings, Planning and Police commission meetings, and Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s weekly show, “Together We Can.”
Kaua‘i joins the City and County of Honolulu and the state Legislature in utilizing webcast technology to provide live and archived access to government meetings and programs.
“We are very pleased to offer our community another opportunity to connect with county government,” the mayor said in a news release. “It’s all part of our efforts towards transparency.”
“The council has always encouraged the implementation of online streaming to benefit the residents of Kaua‘i and has supported the administration in their efforts and schedules to commence this project,” Council Chair Jay Furfaro said in the release. “Today is a landmark day for the county as our residents will now have improved access to viewing government meetings on their own schedule.”
The council is also working to phase in expanded document availability on the county website and will be developing this expansion after receiving the recommendation of the administration at its upcoming furlough review, the release states.
“There is an annual appropriation in our budget that covers taping, captioning and broadcasting of the council, Planning Commission and Police Commission meetings along with the mayor’s weekly show. This service has been offered continuously for many years, and this year, with our new contract with Granicus (versus previous contracts with Hoike), we are adding the live-streaming element,” Beth Tokioka, county director of communications, said in an e-mail Tuesday evening.
“We are implementing live streaming now because we have completed our internal preparations and testing to ensure the system works properly and that our departmental personnel are properly trained on uploading documents and supporting the live streaming process,” Tokioka said. “Although we wish it would have been completed sooner, these preparations were necessary and we have been working diligently to offer the live streaming at the earliest possible date. We are all thrilled that the date is finally here!”
Anyone with a relatively new computer and Internet access will be able to view the meetings via live streaming on the county’s website, www.kauai.gov, or access the archived meetings at any time. The mayor’s show will be viewable after it is captioned within a day or two following a taping.
For those with a PC, the minimum system requirements are the second edition of Windows 98 with at least a 233-MHz processor Pentium II and 64 MB of RAM.
For Macintosh users, a G3 or a newer model with Mac OS X installed is required.
Although the county has been broadcasting public meetings on Hoike public television, channel 53, for years, online streaming will enable residents to watch these meetings in the comfort of their homes or offices at their convenience, the release states. The meetings will still be available for viewing on channel 53.
Archived meetings will be indexed by agenda item to facilitate access to specific segments of a meeting instead of requiring the viewer to watch a meeting in its entirety.
The meetings will also be keyword searchable, allowing residents to easily find a meeting based on their specific interest.
To access the webcast meetings, visit www.kauai.gov and click on the Webcast Meetings link located in the middle of the home page or go to www.kauai.gov/webcastmeetings.
For more information regarding system requirements, call the mayor’s office at 241-4900.
Anyone with questions about meeting content should contact the respective government entity.
The online streaming is made possible through the county’s partnership with Granicus, a leading government software-as-a-service provider.
Granicus hosts the world’s largest government exclusive webcasting network, streaming more than 26 million webcasts and serving over 750 clients spanning all 50 states, the release states.
