Under the Dome: The Jason Tolbert Transparency Act of 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Jason Tolbert Transparency Act of 2009

I just filed HB1611, which provides for an Internet broadcast of the proceedings of committees of the Arkansas House of Representatives. It's time that we catch up to some of our neighboring states in the area of opening our proceedings to those who wish to watch via the web. I restricted it to the House based on some of the historical debates that have taken place in the Capitol.

Want to watch the proceedings in other state legislatures? Just click here:
Tennessee House
Texas House
Louisiana House

5 Comments:

At February 25, 2009 6:41 AM , Anonymous said...: Kudos Steve. The more pro-active the House is in embracing technology, the sillier it makes your counterparts in the Senate look for hiding behind the veil of its "informal nature." Which is code for "we don't want you seeing how we debate and vote."

I will sepculate things will change on that side of the Capitol when the big turnover is completed in two years.
At February 25, 2009 10:09 AM , Anonymous said...: This seems like a very expensive endeavor. There will need to be multiple cameras in multiple rooms. I can't begin to think of all the issues that will come up and extra staff that will be needed.
At February 25, 2009 1:54 PM , Douglas Ward said...: This post has been removed by the author.
At February 25, 2009 1:56 PM , Douglas Ward said...: Thank you sir for this initiative. It would be a big step forward for good governance. I'm confident that we can do this affordably.

On a technical note, the video streams should be encoded with an "open standard" like H.264/MPEG-4 or Flash video. Those popular standards have published specifications for their data formats, so it will be possible to watch those videos a hundred years from now.

It would be a wise move for our State to adopt a formal open standards policy for all electronic documents. Some IT vendors would oppose such a move since they want to lock everyone into their proprietary formats, but their way would result in an electronic Tower of Babel over time. The rest of the technology industry will generally support open standards because public information should be accessible to future generations.
At November 5, 2009 9:19 AM , Josh said...: Thank you for being on the side of transparency.