Integrating Secure Video Conferencing with Broadcast Television for State Legislatures
Remote government during COVID-19 and beyond
By state law, all meetings convened by state legislators are conducted inside state capitol buildings. In addition to the physical meetings, all legislative business is broadcast as a public service over the internet. Recently, a west coast state legislative chamber completed a comprehensive video and audio system upgrade. High resolution studio quality video cameras, microphones and speakers were installed in all Assembly meeting rooms. Then the pandemic hit. Legislators went home and stayed there. Assembly business was drastically reduced. The state legislative body had a new, state of the art broadcast video system in place and a sharply limited number of Assembly meetings to broadcast.
As soon as the “Shelter in place” order was issued, the state’s technical leadership turned to IMT, the company that had designed and built the new television broadcast system with a set of urgent technical considerations. How were lawmakers going to start deploying video conferencing technologies? How could a video conferencing system engage the public and still be secured? How could the video conferencing system integrate seamlessly with the new broadcast video system? How could lawmakers, key witnesses, staff and the public shift to a remote working model and return to a productive legislative schedule with a minimum of interruption to the state’s business?
In less than three weeks, IMT delivered a comprehensive set of technologies, documentation, user training and managed services to enable lawmakers to return to business from a large number of remote locations across the state.
Check out the full article for AVNation here.
