Video on Demand

The Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government currently is doing its annual review of municipal websites. I have been helping out and have noticed that more and more communities have video on demand features either on their websites or on the website of the local community television station. In previous posts I have talked about Franklin’s and Barnstable’s video on demand features. Here are a few more communities that provide this service to the public:

Boston
(Okay, so the Boston City Council has gotten into some trouble in the past with the Open Meeting Law… but still ahead of the majority of communities with this feature.)

Chatham
(Has videos meetings posted from the past two years.)

Easthampton

Fitchburg
(Fitchburg Access TV posts online video of a lot of events around the city.)

Framingham

Haverhill
(Last two meeting of City Council on community television.)

Newton
(Okay, Newton has audio of Alderman meetings, not videos…. but it’s a start.)

Video on demand is a very cool feature, especially in these busy times, that allows citizens to watch public meetings at whatever time is convenient to them, without them having to remember to set the video, dvd recorder, or TiVo. It is another example of how the latest technology that can make access to local government information easier. Hopefully, more communities will embrace it.

Community Websites

When the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government put together its list of municipal websites, we discovered that a small number of websites are “unofficial” sites maintained by private individuals, often with the apparent assistance of local public officials. The Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government decided not to distinguish between these websites and the “official” websites of other municipalities that were clearly maintained by the local government officials. As long as the primary purpose of the website was to provide information about the activities of the local government, we treated the website as the municipality’s website. If the primary purpose of a website, however, did not appear to be to provide information about the activities of the local government, then we did not list it as the website for that municipality, even if the municipality did not have a website of its own. An example of such a website is the Petershamcommon.com website, a good community website, but not a website whose primary purpose appears to be to provide information about the activities and decisions of Petersham’s town government.

In the course of our review, the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government discovered other websites similar to the Petershamcommon.com website. These websites provide helpful information about community activities, groups, businesses and people, much like a local newspaper does. For example, there is Graftoncommon.com, Orangetowngreen.com, and the excellent Dunstablecommons.net. All of these websites can be good sources of community information for the residents of the communities to which they pertain. If you are from any of these communities, you should check these sites out.