In keeping up-to-date, the Government of the Student Body has seated a director of online services to maintain its Web page.

Jared McLaren, freshman in business, will carry out the new project. The position, which he assumed last week, was an idea sparked by an informal conversation he had with GSB President Rob Wiese.

“We were discussing it in the [GSB] office one day, and they showed a need for an online page,” McLaren said.

McLaren has been working with Web pages for the past three to four years, and when he offered his help to GSB, a position was created for him.

Now that McLaren has been working to update the Web page, it includes links such as general information and overview, GSB services, GSB executive branch, GSB legislative branch, GSB judicial branch, GSB committees and laws governing GSB.

Information about the legislative branch remains under construction, but it eventually will list the senators and information about senate meetings, including the agenda, proposals, minutes and the senate’s current projects.

The GSB constitution and bylaws also are included on the Web page.

“The bylaws, constitution and list of senators were out of date on the page,” McLaren said. “That’s one of the reasons a position was created — someone with specific duties of keeping up the page.”

Joel Sieren, director of student information, was previously responsible for the Web page; however, according to the seating bill, he was “overwhelmed with responsibilities and thus unable to maintain this important information source.”

The new position is dedicated solely to the maintenance of the page, and McLaren said he has ideas from his experience with HTML and Web page authoring. He also gets ideas from other student government Web sites.

“I’ve been comparing different student government sites across the country,” he said. “I want to make ours easily accessible, browsable and keep it up-to-date.”

The first portion already has been uploaded to the Internet, but McLaren still plans to update the senate information. The rest of the information should be current by next week, he said.

“It’s definitely going to be a source of information for upcoming senate meetings,” McLaren said. “GSB welcomes people coming in and contributing to meetings.”

McLaren said he wants the Web page to be an information service for GSB. He added that it should inform browsers about the organization and how to contact it.

For the time being, the Web page will be dedicated solely to information, but McLaren said it may become more interactive someday.

“Maybe eventually it will be interactive; not in the near future, but it’s a possibility,” he said. “Right now, we’re just rounding it up.”