Marimba Push Technology Project
(George)



George is a system to improve timely public access to the information resources of governmental organizations in Arizona. It is named after George W. P. Hunt, the first Governor of the state and the President of its 1910 constitutional convention.

Partly through the efforts of the ASU Public Communications Technology Project (PCTP) and ASPIN, access to Arizona governmental information via the WWW has improved steadily in the last five years. There are now 38 web sites offered by state governmental organizations. Research by PCTP suggests that information on these sites is considerably fresh. When the state legislature is in session, its site is updated as changes in legislation occur, sometimes as often as every 15 minutes. Many state agency pages change weekly. Several major local governments offer web information as well, though we lack data on the frequency of change at those sites.

The scope of these offerings and the significant rate of change make it increasingly difficult for the public to monitor new information relating to their concerns. For example, a community development proposal might be the subject of several offerings on different web sites: A bill in the legislature, a speech by the governor, an informational page from the city, and activity at the Department of Commerce might all relate to the proposal. Unless a citizen regularly monitors these sites, he or she is unlikely to take advantage of all these opportunities to be informed.

George is designed to alleviate this problem. He is an "agent" that monitors information offerings on Arizona government sites on behalf of a particular user, looks for information related to his or her interests, and provides notification when new information is discovered.

George is to be based on three technologies:

  • Site monitoring
  • Text indexing an retrieval
  • Intelligent pull (so-called push) user interface
Users will provide profiles of their interests to George, describing issues or events in which they are interested. George will monitor Arizona government sites for new information, and index that information when it is found. He will periodically run user profiles against the index. When he finds information matching a user's profile, George will create a link list customized for a specific user. Using Marimba's Castanet, he will then transmit the information to the userŐs tuner, where it can be read at the user's convenience.