News Release - City Delivers Instant Public Access Through Live Webcasts

In its commitment to bring government closer to the people, the City of Palm Bay will launch its first live webcast coverage of the Palm Bay City Council meeting on Thursday, April 3, 2008. With Thursday’s “go live” launch, the City opens the doors to instant public access to all government meetings as they happen. The service is the culmination of the Information and Innovations Department contract with San Francisco-based Granicus, Inc., a company specializing in government webcasting and public meeting management solutions. “Our goal is to make local government open and easily accessible to its citizens,” said Mike Maier, Chief of Information and Innovations for the City of Palm Bay. “We began this process last year knowing that acquiring this type of technology would be extremely beneficial to our citizens.”

The live streaming of council meetings provides external and internal access to public meetings. The live video files can be accessed via the internet at the City of Palm Bay’s web site and will also be archived in a way that users can search the video database by agenda item for quick access to historical items. “The availability of searchable archives allows not only any meeting, but also any section of a meeting to be retrieved at anytime using a simple keyword search.” Maier said.

In addition to live and archived government meetings, the service will allow other videos to be viewed on the City’s website including the award winning Palm Bay Police Department’s Off the Cuff, recruiting materials, training and other information that educates the public about its government’s activities. The City Council meets the first and third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. A list of other government meetings can be found at www.palmbayflorida.org/citycouncil/meetings.

About Granicus
Founded in 1999, Granicus®, Inc. is the leading provider of government webcasting and public meeting management solutions. Serving nearly 400 governing bodies and reaching more than 60 million individual citizens, Granicus solutions help government maximize democratic transparency, engage their constituents, more efficiently manage public meetings, and improve public communication. Granicus provides the most comprehensive and tightly integrated online public records and webcasting system to all levels of government. For more information, contact Lauren Alexander, Granicus, Inc., 415-357-3618 or visit www.granicus.com.

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