Granicus Helps Increase Transparency Through Streaming Media and Integrated Legislative Data 

Overview

Tennessee has a population of over six million and is ranked the 14th fastest-growing state. According to the Tennessee Constitution, the legislative authority of the State is vested in the General Assembly, which consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives. This governing body is comprised of 33 Senators and 99 Representatives who are elected by popular vote. Generally, the functions of the Legislature are to enact, amend, and repeal the laws of Tennessee.

Challenge

Transparency & Web Modernization

• The Tennessee General Assembly was tasked with redesigning its website to improve performance and usability. Although it had been streaming floor sessions and committee meetings for over two years, the video content was neither presented nor organized well on the website. Also, the basic process for encoding and publishing streaming content to the Web was manual and very time-consuming. It sometimes took between 24-48 hours to keep streaming content up-to-date.
   
• Their previous streaming process required data to frequently be re-encoded. This was a time consuming process because the raw data needed to be re-digitized in real-time. It took the entire length of the meeting to re-encode before publishing to the web.

Solution

Next Generation Information Access: Tight Systems Integration, Cross-Linking, & Search

• The agency needed a system that would automate its encoding and distribution processes. Also, in order to improve the accessibility of legislative information, it needed audio/video tagging or timestamping capability.

• Another imperative was the ability to integrate with and add value to its existing, homegrownsolution for capturing bill data and action called “Committee Automation”.

• Granicus’ open platform allowed the Office of Legislative Information Services to use a Software Development Kit (SDK) to easily exchange data between the Granicus MediaManager platform and the committee automation system.

Results

High Video Usage, Risk Reduction, and Time-Savings

• Since the implementation of Granicus, the agency has grossed nearly 30,000 hits to its archived video content and it is averaging nearly 4,000 hits per month. In fact, it has achieved a record-breaking 1,400 live hits to the House session streaming video.
   
• Because of the integration with committee automation, citizens can quickly navigate to comprehensive legislative data anytime, from any location.
   
• Beyond transparency and citizen involvement improvements, the Tennessee General Assembly has increased operational efficiency with the Granicus system. By using the MediaVault and StreamReplicator architecture, the agency is able to automate its streaming and media storage process, freeing-up the staff time that was previously required for systems monitoring and processing information.
   
• Also, the agency was able to save money and preserve bandwidth by reliably delivering streams to citizens or staff according to their position on an internal (LAN) or external (WAN) network.