Select Committee live-streaming moves off Facebook

Live-streaming of public select committee hearings is now being hosted on Parliament's own website instead of on Facebook.

From this week, all public hearings of select committees are being live-streamed to Parliament's own website instead of on Facebook, a move welcomed by advocates of open government.

Shifting away from the use of the social media platform for hosting select committee live-streams was something recommended in submissions to Parliament's regular Standing Orders review last term. While still a work in progress in terms of its functionality, the move is a first step in bringing together Parliament's select committee and House-sitting content into the same place.

Each select committee already has its own page on Parliament's website with information on membership and schedules among other things, and now it will also feature the latest live streamed video of public hearings. It's a small breakthrough in the bid to make Parliament more accessible to the public, as Parliament's Digital Lead, Winnie Nadi, explained.

"We want to make it as accessible as possible for people and as enjoyable for people to search for things and be able to filter and really understand what's happening," she said.

"Some of the features in the beginning will be quite basic as we test the live-streaming and make sure that it works. As we move in the next few months, we'll have some filtering and searchable content, and it will be a lot more similar to what you can do with the House sitting stuff on our on-demand platform."

The way Scottish and Welsh parliaments host their select committee content has provided useful models to learn from.

"We have had a lot of conversations with Scotland, with Wales, late at night, just talking about how they use their videos. We've noticed that we have more features in some things, and less in other things. So we're going to continue to talk to them so that we can grab all of the good features and make sure New Zealanders have that," Nadi said.

The current home page of Parliament select committees

Committees and public interest

Select committees do much of the work in terms of applying scrutiny to government actions. So the team that facilitates the committees' activities places much importance on the ability of the public to see and hear the work of select committees and engage with their representatives in committees. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details