Everything you need to know
How video minutes work and what a council needs
How it works
The town clerk or the person in charge starts the session from the management portal. Streaming and recording happen automatically. During the session, agenda items are marked to make them easier to browse later. When it ends, the system creates a draft that the clerk reviews before authorising publication. This review does not replace the formal approval of the minutes. Published sessions are browsed from a web portal created for the council.
Video minutes and digital minutes
The solution links the recording to the agenda items and the associated documentation. When the session ends, it creates a draft for review and publication authorisation by the clerk's office. It does not create summary minutes or automatically draft the resolutions.
Relationship with the written minutes
The platform does not create summary minutes or draft the resolutions adopted. The preparation, approval and signing of the minutes follow the council's own procedure.
Electronic signature and approval of the minutes
The solution links the session recording to the minutes and allows their electronic signature and browsing by agenda item. The preparation, approval and signing of the minutes are the council's responsibility under the applicable procedure. The plenary approves the minutes and the clerk's office holds the public attestation function.
Optional features
Speaker identification, subtitling and audio-to-text transcription are optional features.
How it differs from an ordinary video
Anyone can upload a council recording to a website. Video minutes stand out in four ways:
- They are indexed. Each agenda item has its time stamp. Citizens jump straight to the matter that interests them, just like a chapter.
- They are linked to the minutes. The video and the digital minutes go together: anyone checking a resolution can watch the debate that produced it, and the session's electronic minutes are browsed alongside the recording.
- They are signed. The system generates the video's digital fingerprint and signs it electronically from the clerk's office to guarantee its authenticity and integrity.
- They are safeguarded. A copy is kept on the institution's own server and the session is published on a web portal created for the council, not on a third party's platform.
What a council needs to implement it
A chamber with a signal. If cameras and microphones are already there, they integrate with the platform. If not, a conference system is installed to suit the space: one or several high-definition cameras, fixed or robotic, with manual or automated speaker-identification systems.
An internet connection in the chamber. The signal is sent to the cloud over RTMP or SRT from the equipment itself.
A publication point. Sessions are published on a web portal created for the council, with the institution's logo and corporate identity.
Deciding what is public and what is not. Open plenary sessions, closed committees, procurement boards: the platform lets you apply geo-blocking, domain restriction and access control wherever needed.
Remote or hybrid sessions. They integrate with the video conferencing tool the corporation already uses — the Villamayor case runs on Zoom — so the remote signal is part of the same broadcast.
An internet connection in the chamber. The signal is sent to the cloud over RTMP or SRT from the equipment itself.
A publication point. Sessions are published on a web portal created for the council, with the institution's logo and corporate identity.
Deciding what is public and what is not. Open plenary sessions, closed committees, procurement boards: the platform lets you apply geo-blocking, domain restriction and access control wherever needed.
Remote or hybrid sessions. They integrate with the video conferencing tool the corporation already uses — the Villamayor case runs on Zoom — so the remote signal is part of the same broadcast.
What to ask any provider
- Is the video indexed by agenda item, or is it a single two-hour file?
- Are the minutes signed electronically and linked to the video, or are they two separate things?
- Where is the recording hosted, and with what backup?
- Can it be streamed from the council's website, or do citizens end up on a third party's domain?
- What happens to sessions that must not be public?
- Does it integrate with the cameras and microphones we already have?
A real case
The Villamayor de Gállego Council, in Zaragoza, implemented its digital video minutes in 2022: live streaming of sessions, automatic recording, publication on a web portal created for the council and electronic signing of the sessions. Live streaming of municipal council sessions is the first piece of the same process.
What video minutes are
The session recording linked to the minutes
Video minutes link the recording of the session to the minutes and to the associated documentation, and let you browse the video by agenda item. It is the term the sector actually uses: it appears in tender specifications and in the minutes of councils that already work this way.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions before rolling out video minutes
Do you want to see how your council's video minutes would look?
Send us the agenda of a real session and we will show you how it is indexed, signed and published.