Open Government Links of the Week – July 8, 2011
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“Michigan communities join other cities, states in banning electronic communication during public meetings”
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“Successful changes to open meetings law in Massachusetts–a year later”
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“OpenDataPhilly.org source code released”
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“#GOV20 Takeaways from the Space Shuttle’s Final Launch”
- “There’s more than one way to look at Friday’s historic final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-135). What can local, state, or other government agencies learn from how NASA handled the event?
- Here are just some ways that NASA used the web to both build it’s brand and provide visitors with information that they were looking for. Also, don’t miss the photo collection from the event at the end of this post!”
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Open Government Links of the Week – April 22, 2011
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It’s that time of the week where we let you know about some of the stories going on in the open government and technology space! Have any that should have been included? Share them in the comments!
“White House unveils tax calculator designed to give taxpayers a receipt” (Nextgov)
- Here’s the White House’s blog post and techPresident’s post about it.
- Interestingly, Clay Johnson (@cjoh on Twitter) had a blog post on this back in October. That post is entitled, “You Can’t Have a Receipt for your Taxes“.
- What do you think? Is the White House’s “Your Federal Taxpayer Receipt” a fair thing to post? Let us know in the comments!
“The Top Twittering Cities & Counties” (Code for America, HT)
- “This past cycle, we took a stab at collecting all the Twitter handles for cities and counties in ShortStack, our knowledge base of local governments. Out of 1293 accounts across 810 cities and counties (that we found), here’s the top ten by followers…”
“April 2011 Municipal Cost Index shows continuing price increases” (American City & County)
- How much higher was it than last year?
- Here’s an archive of the Index and a blog post on it by American City & County.
- About the Index: “The Municipal Cost Index, developed exclusively by American City & County, is designed to show the effects of inflation on the cost of providing municipal services.”
“Users to Google Video: Please Don’t Delete Our Clips” (GigaOM)
New York: “Putting the ‘Public’ in Public Meetings” (Gotham Magazine)
- ‘Staff who have to stay in the office, whether it’s the district office or even at City Hall, are assisted by webcasting,’ said [Councilmember] Brewer. ‘Not everyone has time to come down to City Hall, since government operates during the day.’….
- In the City Council, Brewer currently carries legislation modeled after the state rules that would require all city agencies to webcast their meetings. She hopes council will take it up this fall.
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New York Public Meetings Now More Open
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Change to the Law
As of Friday (April 1, 2011), the following is now part of the Open Meetings Law [Public Officers Law, Article 7, Section 103, subdivision (d)]:
“1. Any meeting of a public body that is open to the public shall be open to being photographed, broadcast, webcast, or otherwise recorded and/or transmitted by audio or video means. As used herein the term “broadcast” shall also include the transmission of signals by cable.
2. A public body may adopt rules, consistent with recommendations from the committee on open government, reasonably governing the location of equipment and personnel used to photograph, broadcast, webcast, or otherwise record a meeting so as to conduct its proceedings in an orderly manner. Such rules shall be conspicuously posted during meetings and written copies shall be provided upon request to those in attendance.”
What does this mean for citizens?
This means that government officials has to allow a member of the public to record a public meeting for a webcast, TV show, etc. (as long as the citizen is following the rules setup by the government body for doing so). If someone wants to video the meeting (or parts of it), they should be able to do so easily and they now have the backing of the NY State Law.
Possible Implications for Officials
If an official wanted to keep citizen activists, reporters, and other members of the public from recording a meeting, they really can’t (so long as the citizen follows the rules).
Someone can hypothetically video the whole meeting and only post snippets of it online and the government body can’t do anything to stop the recording (if the person is following the rules).
So…
Wouldn’t it just be better for governments to record the meetings themselves and host the video on their website? That way, if someone does take an official out of context in a video (or audio) collage, there is easily accessible proof to show the public what really happened. Otherwise, officials are left at the mercy of the person with the recording.
*This should not be taken as legal advice. Talk with a lawyer about this.
PUBLIC OFFICERS LAW, ARTICLE 7
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