Government Observation Of The Future Is In The Present

Transparency in government has become a buzz word. The public wants more transparency and many governing bodies are trying to come up with ways to accomplish this.

For a number of years, Crystal Lake City Council has aired meetings on the public access television channel. This way the public can sit at home and watch the council meetings. If for some reason a resident misses the viewing, they can seek a DVD copy from the City Hall for $1.

Now McHenry County Board is looking at ways to provide audio streaming of the county board meetings. A presentation to the Management Services Committee on Tuesday provide a great deal of information from a company, IQM2, on something they call Intelligent Meeting Management.

This system can integrate all the aspects for a County Board meeting. Once the process is understood, the company's program provides the opportunity to provide the pubic with all the public information included in a packet for a meeting so it can be accessed on the computer screen along with the audio portion of the meeting also available on the computer screen.

In a presentation to the Management Services Committee on Tuesday the presentation explained the aspects of the system including Webcasting, Record Keeping, Document Integration, Minutes Transcribing, Reporting Tools, Scalability, all for an annual subscription price of $4,500 for the audio only with an added $5,000 one time implementation fee.

As an example we found the site for Northbrook, IL and their September 28 Council meeting was on their site for viewing this .morning This was complete with the associated documents for the various matters considered. With the click of the mouse, they could also be viewed.

For citizens interested in watching their government representatives, this could be an easier way than traveling to the meeting and trying to hear what they are saying. Usually the meetings are streamed live over the internet and the citizenry can watch from the comfort of their easy chairs.

McHenry County is expected to be discussing these possibilities further.