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Sunday, November 27, 2005

Ind. Gov't. - More on the Indiana General Assembly's use of the internet

The Indianapolis Star has a story today on the State of Indiana website. Most interesting to me was this section near the end of the story:

Given the amount of information that flows through the Indiana General Assembly each day in the form of bills, budgets and meetings, the legislature's Web site has served as a petri dish, of sorts, for experimenting with the capabilities of the Internet.

Several years ago, the General Assembly began posting live audio of House and Senate sessions. Users also can download bills and monitor the status of legislation with special "bill tracking" software.

Last year came streaming video of full House and Senate sessions, a feature so popular it twice forced the state to upgrade its computer servers this year.

For the session that begins in January, the legislature plans to post live video of every meeting of the pivotal House Ways and Means Committee, as well as other key committee hearings.

The site also will include a virtual real-time "voting board" that mimics the electronic voting displays in the House and Senate chambers.

"Much like C-SPAN, people will be able to follow what's going on either on television or on the Internet," House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said. "That's the long-term goal here."

For more, see this ILB entry from last Monday, 11/21/05, titled "House to put Ways & Means Committee on Internet; implications."

My thoughts. I use the General Assembly website daily and couldn't operate without it; particularly as the General Assembly no longer prints the Indiana Code, the Indiana Administrative Code, the Acts of Indiana, etc. To my mind, this makes it imperative that the General Assembly take precautions to insure that our history is preserved. Most in danger is our recent history. I'll be writing more about this, perhaps in my end-of-the-year wrap-up or "wish-list."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 27, 2005 12:16 PM
Posted to Indiana Government