Ensuring the transparency of democracy in Northern Ireland is supported by a reliable and robust live streaming service.
Transparency and accountability are fundamental strands of any democratic system. In a modern democracy, with the technology now at our disposal, people rightly expect to be able to see every word spoken by their elected representatives in the course of their official duties.
That’s why the Northern Ireland Assembly streams every utterance and gesture from its plenary and committee sessions live from the Parliament Buildings. The footage is filmed by professionals and produced on-site at Stormont.
Up to three ‘channels’ can be streaming live at any time and there is often very high demand to view them among Northern Ireland’s newsrooms, politicos and voters, particularly when contentious or newsworthy topics are being debated.
The Assembly tasked Tibus with putting in place a streaming infrastructure to cope with demand and ensure that the electorate enjoy unfettered access to proceedings at Stormont.
Coverage from the Assembly is initially streamed using Flash encoders. The team producing the stream on-site pushes the live feed to us.
We created a dedicated property for the Assembly’s streaming activity on our tailored content delivery network (CDN). We recondition the feed they send to us and convert it into an internet-ready stream, which is then hosted via our CDN on the Assembly’s website.
From there, the public of Northern Ireland and further afield can keep up-to-date with the latest proceedings.
Our managed streaming service gives the Northern Ireland Assembly confidence that their streams are ready to cope with sudden peaks in demand. The digital team at Stormont can concentrate on production of the video feed, without having to worry about - or invest in - providing extra capacity to cope with busy periods.
The arrangement is efficient because it avoids the need to buy in capacity that would be idle outside of the Assembly’s business hours.
The Assembly digital team continue to develop plans for the future. These might involve using social media and other internet platforms to ensure they continue to make the democratic system increasingly accessible.
They are really progressive in the way they look at using digital tools to support citizen interaction. We’re delighted to work with them and look forward to continue working with them as they continue to develop their tools for digital engagement.
