2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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and is always made it known that that’s available for the departments to use their conferencing room and their conferencing equipment. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I guess then my question would be why did we get so many comments from so many different department heads saying we should use video conferencing more. There’s obviously a barrier there in the perception that we should do this more so that we would reduce staff travel time and mileage, and that there’s a inaudible there, and I’m trying to get at it. How do those things get resolved? MR. TAKABA: I read those comments too. I took it to mean – well there were some that came from the employees and there were some that may have been generated by the departments. But the ones that came from the employees, I think what they were trying to do was reach out to us, like if we could make a recommendation, the county gets more proactive in getting of department heads, maybe division heads, to encourage the use of video rather than generate from the line level. I think it was more like, well it came from both the departments and the employees that it was like getting the county to make a concerted effort to hold more video conferencing meetings, as opposed to buying equipment. I don’t know if there were any requests for actual buying more video conferencing equipment. Oh there was? MS. O’HARA: Yes. There were. This is question, I mean we’re calling the video conferencing thing, but part of the issue I think has been until recently the county was split into all these many offices in Hilo, so there might have been a video conferencing at the mayor’s office but that’s across town for the Department of Environment Management. And I don’t know with moving into the new building there are still departments that are still scattered around town, if that’s going to resolve the centralization shield. And perhaps it does need to be looked at as an overall county plan to bring those departments that are in different locations to have the satellite offices for Planning and others that are over in Kona. And do they have the video conferencing at their offices to be able to join in to meetings? Are those things available currently? Another question is, are services like SKIPE allowed for use? Are there legal issues? Is it okay to use things like SKIPE? MR. MASUDA: SKIPE is not a secured network. MS. O’HARA: Yes. It’s not a secured network, so that’s why I’m asking. Are there legal issues for holding Council meetings across anything like that? MR. MASUDA: Council meetings, it’s open to the public anyway. But I can tell you one thing for sure. I would never interview or have a confidential meeting over SKIPE. MS. O’HARA: Well not confidential. But sometimes it’s just connecting with your employee or something that needs to have happen in face to face. MS. MECKLENBURG: I’m sorry, if I could just interrupt and caution the commission that the agenda item is intended to cover the processing of contracts and contract administration, so before it gets to far off the topic. Sorry. Sunshine Law. 14