The item, which includes a $91,818 contract to AVI-SPL digital workforce service provider, included in this month’s Columbia City Council consent agenda, was adopted Thursday during the board’s July regular meeting.
Earlier this month during the council’s study session, MIS Director Rick Harrison said the current technology has reached its replacement cycle and is considered inadequate for modern communications. This is primarily due to running on an analog system, as well as the growing digital workplace demands that have arisen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the new contract, the city would convert to an all-digital system.
“Our current system is all analog, and it’s ancient,” Harrison said. “Some of it was carried over from the old City Hall, and we’re not able to function in the world that’s emerged from the pandemic. Virtually, we just barely get along, and so we have proposed that we update everything, to go full digital.”
By switching to a digital system, it would provide a more accurate synchronization of audio/video, which Harrison said has been an issue with the current one.
“If we play a video with the current system, the latency with the delay between the audio and video is noticeable, and that’s because of the way it feeds with the analog,” Harrison said. “It’s like watching an old science fiction movie where the lips don’t match the dialog. This will fix all of that, will be instantaneous.”
The new system would install hi-definition 1080p cameras with semi-automatic functions.
“There are also things like being able to do a ‘picture-in-picture’ display, open captioning and being able to do that on the fly for the hearing impaired people in the community,” Harrison said.
It would also connect the TV monitor located in the council foyer with the live feed, which it currently does not. This would accommodate viewers in the event of crowd overflow in the main chambers.
Providing the ability for picture-in-picture projections was an attribute Vice Mayor Christa Martin said she was excited to see implemented.
“When there are presentations being made and we want to see what that is, what’s on our screen and being shown will be part of this upgrade,” Martin said. “This is wonderful.”
For city staff, it would also create a more consolidated workspace with less equipment and less risk when it comes to tampering with settings.
The new system wouldn’t be without its drawbacks, Harrison added.
The biggest one, he said, is that it would no longer allow the city to broadcast meetings live via Columbia Power and Water Systems’ public access cable network, although possible solutions are being discussed.
“We’re trying to move into the future and accommodate growth, and try to anticipate what we haven't anticipated so far,” Harrison said. “We’re going to see what we can do.”
Mayor Chaz Molder said he would want the CPWS public access broadcast to still be available to citizens, even if it isn’t necessarily live.
“If they can’t be live, then so be it, but it sounds like there is a plan in place to where the public can still have the opportunity to view meetings within the next 24, 48 or 72 hours,” Molder said. “I think people will like that, having that option, even if it’s not live.”
Molder later commended Harrison and his team for their work over the last year in allowing meetings to be conducted digitally and via YouTube live streaming, especially considering the outdated equipment they had to work with.
“You did do a lot with a little during COVID with regard to all the remote meetings that your office helped put together with the virtual meetings,” Molder told Harrison.
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