Granicus® MediaManager™

Solutions for government webcasting

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “information is the currency of democracy.” Civic engagement is a pinnacle of democratic governance, wherein public trust and confidence in the democratic process is amplified by the free flow of information and active public debate. Delivering transparency and accountability in government operations, and mechanisms for the people to get involved are critical ingredients to democratic society—where closing the gap between citizens and public officials is becoming a foremost priority. Yet the challenge of actively and efficiently engaging a population demands the most convenient means of keeping the public informed. Granicus’ webcasting solutions solve these challenges with a highly scalable, reliable and comprehensive platform for strengthening government transparency and public agency communication.

Granicus MediaManager, the centerpiece of Granicus webcasting solutions, is fully hosted software that makes audio/video streaming tangible for any government or public agency. The software enables government staff to manage video and audio content of public meetings and other government functions without having to understand the technical complexities of efficiently capturing and distributing streaming content to constituents.

From the viewer’s perspective, Granicus webcasting is fully transparent. Streaming content plays smoothly, quickly, and side-by-side with related content and indexed minutes—embedded in a Web page that we design to look as precisely identical to your own site as you prefer. This is backed by a highly reliable datacenter and extensive reporting options so governing bodies can measure the effectiveness of streaming content.

How Granicus Webcasting Works
Granicus leverages your existing infrastructure and operations. Video and audio from your cameras, videocassettes, compact discs or audio tapes are captured and converted to Microsoft Windows Media format with a small hardware device called the Granicus Outcast® Encoder. The encoder converts your analog or digital audio/video signals into a format ready for streaming over the Web. With Granicus, this single format delivers the best possible quality with 100% compatibility across all PC- and Apple-based systems. With such unprecedented cross-platform compatibility, Granicus webcasting solutions make sure your content is accessible to any constituent with access to the Internet.

Maximize transparency and accountability with increased public outreach, institutional and legislative transparency into the democratic process.
Keep the public actively informed with 24x7 access to webcasts of all public meetings and related information — recorded meetings and all relevant documents are fully indexed, keyword searchable, and cross-linked.
Increase public engagement in government by sharing live and on-demand webcasts of public meetings, public service announcements, emergency response briefings, cable access programming or other public events in a manner that is convenient and accessible to them anytime, anywhere.
Expand the public meeting audience with the only government webcasting solution delivering 100% crossplatform streaming compatibility to PC and Apple-based systems.

Granicus securely hosts and streams audio and video files from servers located at our highly reliable and redundant datacenters. The encoded file is automatically uploaded to the Granicus datacenter for distribution live or on-demand, and archived for a minimum of 12 months at no additional cost. Our fully managed infrastructure provides every Granicus client with unlimited bandwidth, supporting even the most demanding streaming operations. Ultimately, this means Granicus grows with you: as your needs change, the bandwidth to scale with your growth will always be there. More than just improving the quality of your user’s experience, Granicus’ managed service for streaming media helps alleviate your organization from the unwanted network congestion that typically comes from multiple, simultaneous requests for streaming video content. It protects the integrity of your existing systems, while being transparent to your users and easy for your staff to manage.

Granicus MediaManager: Capture, Manage and Distribute Streaming Content
Whether you are streaming your council or commission meetings, public access channel programming, emergency response briefings, public service announcements, or other public events, the process starts and ends with Granicus MediaManager—software at the heart of your streaming solution. While Granicus Outcast Encoder and our managed infrastructure make the technical complexities of streaming completely painless, they also offer robust IT security and network/firewall flexibility. Granicus MediaManager makes the process of creating and managing content equally straightforward, and highly automated. The software is fully hosted, meaning government staff can access it from any Web browser from the clerk’s office to council chambers—protecting content behind highly flexible access and user restriction options. Granicus MediaManager enables staff to identify and configure their encoders, allowing recordings to start and stop automatically, on a recurring schedule, or manually whenever needed.

With Granicus VoteCast, managing council votes could not be easier. At the click of a button, the chairperson or clerk can start and stop voting on an agenda item. Once voting has begun, meeting members cast their votes using their touch-screen console, voting push buttons or other input devices. Granicus VoteCast then automatically tabulates the results in real-time and presents it to the clerk, including vote details for each individual such as the vote type, count and percentage. The meeting clerk or facilitator always maintains the ability to override meeting action when needed.

Live vote results, current agenda items and speaker timers can be automatically displayed on TV monitors or projection systems in the chambers, with extensive display options. The system also ensures consistent access to all meeting actions and related information from each meeting participant’s console.

Following the meeting, clerks can clean up and publish meeting minutes automatically or manually, including the complete, detailed summary of attendance, motions, vote history and notes captured on individual agenda items. The precision, timeliness and efficiency of Granicus VoteCast significantly decreases the costs and staff time devoted to minutes accuracy and approval processes.

Total Granicus Integration: Comprehensive meeting management and public access
Granicus VoteCast seamlessly integrates with all Granicus solutions, providing unparalleled operational efficiency. Granicus VoteCast provides an entirely more efficient work process for clerks, while also adding the ability to build meeting minutes in real-time and publish them to the web as LinkedMinutes™—the most comprehensive minutes format used in government today. This emerging industry standard, invented by Granicus, is a total, encapsulated, fully dynamic archive of agendas, minutes and supporting documents—all indexed, keyword-searchable and cross-linked to streaming audio or video recordings of the meeting. Staff and constituents can not only view streaming video or audio broadcasts of the meeting, they can view the agenda, minutes and all related documents with a single click.