Zoom or Teams? - tech issues hit council meeting

Public access to a Cabinet meeting of Powys County Council had to be cut after a Zoom meeting hit problems and they had to switch to Microsoft Teams.

It meant live public access to the meeting was lost when they switched over.

It was down to one of the Cabinet members wanting  to give a report wholly in Welsh 

At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, members of the public needed to catch up with events later in the day after the meeting was forced to be switched from one live streaming service to another.

This was because, Cllr Myfanwy Alexander, portfolio holder for Welsh, Communications and Adult Social Care was going to present the annual Welsh Language Standards report in Welsh.

But gremlins got into the system and the cabinet were forced to switch over to hold the meeting on Microsoft Teams.

Cllr Alexander would later present the report in both Welsh and English.

During recent months, several scrutiny committees have switched over to using Zoom, but this was the first meeting that the cabinet had chosen to use the platform.

Council leader, Cllr Rosemarie Harris, said: “I do apologise for starting so late, we have tried to use a different digital platform today.

“We tried to use Zoom because we wanted to try and offer a Welsh translation, but it didn’t work very well so we’ve reverted to using (Microsoft) Teams.

“We will try Zoom again in the future. I do hope people have been able to join us as there are some quite important decisions to be made here.

“We have tried very hard as we have our Welsh Language Standards report, there’s a bit of an irony in that.”

During the pandemic, several local authorities started using Zoom to hold meetings online so that a translator can attend and be able to translate English into Welsh and Welsh into English on the spot.

In Wales, the Welsh language has equal status in law and its use is encouraged.

There is an expectation that councillors will be able to conduct their business and speak at meetings in either Welsh or English.

In May 2020, several local authorities including Powys joined forces to back a campaign to ask Microsoft to have a live translation facility added into Teams.

Microsoft is still working on bringing live translation capabilities to Teams meetings.

 

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service