The Iowa Caucus Project, now available on the World Wide Web, was launched as a simulation program at the Iowa State Fair last week.

The program gives users access to the latest caucus news, caucus partners and contacts. Presidential candidates are all listed along with their itineraries for the month.

Also listed is a calendar of events that includes the National Violence Prevention Conference in October and the Jan. 13 Des Moines Register Republican Presidential Debate.

“It’s a service to the media, a resource guide,” said Kristi O’Connor, project coordinator.

Valoree Armstrong of the Caucus Project’s public relations department, said the program will be a valuable asset to journalists.

“It provides 24-hour access to information needed by the press. We hope it will go a long way to help journalists do their jobs,” Armstrong said.

While the program is aimed at the national media, anyone can access the program on the Internet at: http://www.profiles.iastate.edu/iacaucus.

“A number of candidates themselves have a home page,” Armstrong said.

There is no direct interaction between users and the candidates through the system, because not all candidates have access, Armstrong said.

“We do not want to show preference toward one candidate,” she added.

The program also has a segment called “Iowa at a Glance” that contains general information about the state. A user can find that the population of Iowa is 2.8 million and that the state has about 1.5 million registered voters.

“It gives an idea of what it is like to live and work in Iowa,” Armstrong said.

Since the system was implemented a week ago, over 700 people have taken advantage of it.

The information is usually updated once a week, but it will change as often as is necessary, O’Connor said.

The Caucus Project is part of Iowa Profiles, a much larger project developed at Iowa State, said Mark Imerman, an ISU program specialist.

“We develop projects that provide information relevant to Iowans and focus on problems here in Iowa,” Imerman said.