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Telecom & Video Services Agency Report

June 16 - July 21, 2008

Thank you for this opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Telecom & Video Services Agency has been involved with during the past month.

RECOVERY PROGRAMMING

The Telecom & Video Services Agency met with Councilor Jeff Cardwell, Telematrix Productions and TV Web City to air programming produced by these entities on our City TV. The emphasis was getting disaster recovery programming aired pertaining to the north eastside tornados and the south side flooding to aide our constituents. Specifically with the south side flooding issues we met with John Ball from Emergency Management to air this production covered by Telematrix. That town hall meeting coverage was intended to provide detailed information as to where affected homeowners were to go for disaster relief. That program is also available on our website to view at www.indygov.org/tvsa and scroll down to 'meetings on demand'.

BRIGHT HOUSE FRANCHISE FEE REVIEW

With respect to the Bright House audit review period of 2004-2006, the City's auditor and Bright House's counsel were to meet to discuss unresolved issues.  Their meeting got postponed because of a personal matter Bright House's counsel had to attend to. We are hopeful that the two sides meet soon and can make progress to bring this matter to some closure so that we can then address the 2007 franchise fee review.

PUBLIC SERVICE DROPS

The City's Parks Department has made requests for public service drops which involve both Comcast and Bright House, and we are working with both companies to comply with those requests.  One involves the Windsor Recreation Center at 25^th and Kenyon that we are still investigating as to who has their facilities the closest to in providing the Center with service.

FILING WITH IURC

Pursuant to House Bill 1279 that moves video franchising to the State, the Telecom & Video Services Agency and its counsel have been preparing documents to be filed with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) with respect to the continuation of all public service drops and the institutional network (INET). The law requires a municipality to file such a request pursuant to the law under Section 29 by the end of the year to continue said services.  The INET is utilized by Public Safety as a closed circuit communications system for internal training and certified continual education, Homeland Security, remote roll call and other services.

INDIANAPOLIS/AGENCY WINS AWARD

We are pleased to announce that the City of Indianapolis was awarded second place in the Governance for Leadership in Digital Access. To explain and I am quoting from the press release here, " Indianapolis distinguished itself in this category with strong government transparency and public access improvements using Granicus webcasting solutions.  The City displayed excellence in its ability to extend the reach and value of its cable programming using rich media, online archiving and video indexing." The awards will be given at the Digital Governance Banquet to be held in San Francisco August 6-8, which we will pass on attending.

Continuing with the press release, "The 2008 Digital Governance Awards program is presented by Granicus and sponsored by Microsoft.  It celebrates government agencies for using digital technology in innovative ways to deliver organizational value by creating competitive advantage, reducing operating costs, optimizing legislative processes or improving government-to-citizen relationships"

To that end, Indianapolis produced and provided video on demand training for poll workers such as inspectors, clerks and sheriffs for the Election Day process.  This initiative came after the electoral problems evidenced last year.

The vision of webstreaming and video archiving for the City was a road long traveled, as it took nearly a decade to bring about as a reality. Since launching this service dating back to April 1 of last year, we have seen over 110,000 views on the video on demand applications alone through July 15 of this year.  The top visited programs viewed are the Pro Se video with 3,206 views, Jury Duty at 2,904 and the 12/17/07 Council meeting with 2,626 views.

Additionally, the Mayor Ballard's State of the City Address has 1,159 views as of July 15.

If there is a point to be made here, which has been recognized nationally by our peers, it is that we model City TV as a local version of CSPAN to maximize transparency of government to our constituents.

In addition to the Telecom & Video Services Agency pushing and realizing this initiative, I would like to recognize the staff at City TV that produce all to most of the content that we archive for on demand viewing. This includes Bradley K. Sims, Angela Gilmer, Dave Lister, Ken Montgomery, Alan Dhayer and especially Nick Hess, our systems administrator, who does most of the updates and indexing for video on demand feature.  On the ISA side, I want to recognize Layne Young and Shital Patel for embracing the vision and goals of our office to make this a reality.

MEDIATING CABLE COMPLAINTS

The Telecom & Video Services Agency has been serving as a consumer advocate to Indianapolis and Marion County video subscribers in assisting them in mediating complaints on their behalf.  

Customer Complaint Log

June 1st through June 30th, 2008