Definition of the problem:

The average citizen (perhaps both in Russia and the U.S.) does not have much information on active legislation from congressional bodies. 

The information the average citizen does hear of the legislation is first prioritized by media organizations. For example, the lack of knowledge on the Obama-care Bill (healthcare). We feel this leads to inaccurate descriptions of the bills themselves and then therefore incorrectly founded public sentiment.

Our solution:

Give the average citizen access to a personalized webpage.  People make profiles based upon challenge questions which delineate between their interests and express facts about themselves. From this information, legislation and parts of legislation relevant to their interests are brought to their attention through an automatic news feed function. Therefore, making the singular user the "prioritizer" of their own information stream instead of a large media organization that may or may not have non-agreeable goals in mind.

The method to our engine:

1. Use a builder to take words and definitions to create a databank of words.  These words are hierarchically organized on their synonyms and generality (a degree of separation between definitions is established). 

2. Sort Legislative documents by frequency of keywords and synonyms to assigned value by user and then parse out the structure of legislation into readable bits (a sentence, a clause, a paragraph perhaps).

3.Query using keywords and synonyms developed from the hierarchy of words to produce statements relevant to the user’s preferences.

Final product of Code4Country time allotted:

Power Point Walk-through:

http://code4country.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/46037620/TAX%20GOD.pptx

Code:

http://code4country.mgwhitfield.com/final

DATA:

Team members:

Bohdan Banducci - bb8905a@student.american.edu

Alex Battaglia - ab3180a@student.american.edu

Mike Whitfield - contact@mgwhitfield.com