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For this class, I have joined a group of software engineering students to improve the existing SOAP database’s legislators and lobbyists pages. We believe that these pages are as important as those describing the pollutants and polluted sites that plague Trenton. By fixing these pages, we are enabling all users (journalists, students, activists) to inform themselves about the officials who are responsible for environmental action.

 

On the legislators page, we will list relevant New Jersey legislators by name, political affiliation, occupation, and a brief list of environmental bills that they’ve been involved with. The page will also have links to each legislator’s website. The lobbyists page will be similar to the legislators page except that it will also include a brief history of each lobbyist.

 

In addition to the comprehensive information about each official and lobbyist, users will also be able to contact whoever they are interested in because of our functional email button. This function will bring up a clear, user friendly form that will allow anyone to send an email.

 

Perhaps the most exciting part of my group’s module is the Open Congress widget. This will be a constantly updating list of the status of environmental bills. This list will be limited to New Jersey at first but can be sorted by county. By integrating the Open Congress site, users will be able to further inform themselves of environmental issues and the political players attached to them.

 

This is a big undertaking, but luckily I have the help of some skilled software engineers. So far, this project has been an interesting experience for me because as an Interactive Multimedia major, sometimes I feel that I have more in common with the software engineering students than I have with my fellow journalism students. My group members will be doing the technical work that would otherwise be assigned to me and for the first time, I will be the one who is responsible for the content. I feel very fortunate that I have skills relevant to both journalism and computer science.