The Government of the Student Body is working to improve communication between themselves and the student body.

The next step forward for GSB was introduced last week by Off-Campus Senator Barry Snell, senior in history, in the form of the “Making GSB Accountable and Transparent” bill.

The bill states all activities of all branches of GSB be made available to the public in documentary, audio or video form and that all information  available to the public on the Web page be kept up to date.

“Transparency is something we are always trying to improve,” said GSB President Jared Knight, senior in political science.

For close to a year, the current website has been undergoing a rebuilding process; after the 2011 spring semester, GSB switched from one website service to another which allowed its page to mirror Iowa State’s official Web page.

The website service switch also brought about some problems; links on the website were broken and Ledgemaster, the program the Senate uses to post bills, did not save automatically to the group’s website. Many of these issues were being addressed already prior to the presentation of the bill, but currently, the news and events page, the Legman page and the homepage have not been updated.

Another point brought up in the bill was the assignment of a “webmaster” to manage and update the site. Currently the secretary for GSB has been fulfilling this position. An alternative possibility has been the appointment of the public relations committee or the communications division of GSB to manage the website.

“We talked about whether or not there should be a webmaster or a webmaster/secretary, but we haven’t decided this yet,” said Gage Kensler, speaker of the senate and senior in political science.

The financial cost of this bill is currently unknown; organizers of the bill are still meeting with IT services and trying to figure out the complete details, including available space online.

“There really shouldn’t be any cost because of the bill; most of it is [Microsoft] Word documents, which don’t cost anything,” Kensler said.

One idea that has been thrown around to make the organization more accessible but was not mentioned in the bill, was the idea of live-streaming GSB meetings on the Internet.

“We talked last year about putting together live-streaming but did not get it all figured out, but it would be something pretty cool to have,” Knight said.

One issue has been how to implement all of these programs online for students to use, as well as how to make the student body become aware of it.

Knight pointed out a few new ways GSB is planning to enhance awareness among the student body: by writing newsletters, which would be sent out to students, and by pushing for more out-of-office hours, so senators could connect with their constituents more.

“All we can do is make sure that we do all that we can do,” Knight said.

The accountable and transparent bill went through GSB’s Rules Committee on Monday and will not be put to a vote by the Senate until further details have been hashed out between GSB and IT services.