Redefining Council to Public Reach

Local councils within the UK have the massive task of not only providing a high quality service but also to reduce cost and complexity year on year! – local authorities have had to embrace technology in innovative ways to reach its constituents.

Public engagement is different within large cities and even smaller rural areas but it's still important from a political perspective to include all types of people outside the confines of the council chambers. Here many important talks and decision happen that no everyone gets to see on a regular basis. Think of a time when something important happened in your ear and you wanted to know more about it and how it impacted you!

Your local government is important and crucial to everyone in the community. So how do councils extend their reach? - by not only embracing technology but improve communications.

Many councils already Broadcast council meetings either through free methods that might not be as professional as a full event team, but much more cost effective than purchasing expensive software to manage the end to end process. Councils are looking for groundbreaking ways to harness technology to improve its communications but have a simple platform for normal (Non-IT dept) people to manage.

Organisations (not only councils, but police, health and other public sectors) may already have this facility open to them through Microsoft's Office 365 cloud platform, named Skype Meeting Broadcast. This allows for a single person or multiple people (the event team) to broadcast public and secured meetings to up to 10,000 attendees in a single sitting! Allowing controls over multiple video cameras, content and enhance communication threads.

Just some of the features in something you may already have available to you! Takes minutes to setup and be live.

Your community can watch either live or the recording after the event, whether it be on an iPad or an Android device or Google or Windows through a normal internet web browser - no complicated plug-ins, just simple to use.

This case study below hows how easy this can be setup, the value to this council and how members of the public can now be more connected to the council.

[embed]https://youtu.be/-XzeOa3XUfs[/embed]

To find out more information either speak with your exiting IT dept contact us or learn more about this here:

What ishttps://support.office.com/en-gb/article/What-is-a-Skype-Meeting-Broadcast-c472c76b-21f1-4e4b-ab58-329a6c33757d

Case Studyhttps://news.microsoft.com/en-au/2016/08/23/adelaide-city-council-redefining-democracy-in-the-digital-age/#sm.0001t7h3ca6etcy8tb71pr7e26j50