Case Studies: The French National Assembly (France)

The French National Assembly decided in 2009 to equip its commission rooms with High Definition video cameras allowing for the recording and rebroadcasting of meetings. Julien Deschamps, audiovisual engineer for the “Service des Affaires Immobilières et du Patrimoine” (Real Estate and Patrimony Service) of the National Assembly, presents the project and the reasons leading to the choice of Panasonic equipment.

In the future, the commissions of the National Assembly will doubtless be led to multiply their public meetings, and their debates will take a greater place in the parliamentary process. This is leading to an increased demand for publicity, whether as part of a demand for transparency, as a direct effect of the constitutional reforms or those of the Assembly regulations. The project covers five commission rooms; three rooms were renovated and two were built from scratch.

Who was involved in the preparation of the project and how did you choose your technical partner?

The project was prepared essentially by the Service des Affaires Immobilières et du Patrimoine (SAIP) of the Assembly as the renovation required the intervention of numerous trades – carpentry, painting, electricity, etc. – in collaboration with the Communication Service and the Information Systems Service for all work concerning archiving and Internet distribution. In the summer of 2009, I myself undertook a highly detailed technical and financial study of the future installation. We also called upon the assistance of a project manager to validate these studies and above all to aid me in the drawing-up of technical specifications. The choice of a technical partner was made within the framework of a public call for bids, in the form of the habitual formalised procedure. Each candidate installer tabled an offer, and it was the project of IEC that was judged the best with regard to the criteria announced in the consultation (40% technical, 20% organisation and 40% economic).

Why did you choose Panasonic equipment?

We above all chose an installation in its entirety. The Panasonic cameras took up an important, but not major part (around 10% of the cost). These new AW-HE50S cameras, which had still not been commercialised at the time of the study, were particularly well adapted to the needs of the assembly in terms of discretion and integration, thanks to their management over an IP network. Their technical performance is well adapted to their usage, which is for internal diffusion, distribution to TV networks and also Internet distribution (direct or via VoD), which explains no doubt the choice of several of the candidate installers who proposed this model.

How do you find the final result?

The final result is highly satisfactory and well adapted to the institutional world. This new installation required an investment that was largely below that which would have been required for a standard broadcast installation, and the highly developed automation has allowed us to considerably reduce running costs compared to our other broadcast installations.

"SPECIALreport by Cleverdis - www.cleverdis.com - August 2012"

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