IPTD-341
EJ Notification 2.0
Description
The interest beyond already delivered EJ sign-up and notification (see #148) is to provide the kind of targeted updating people would recognize with high-end services like Amazon whereby the customer gets notices very specific to things of interest at key moments of change (i.e., received, shipped, any update or delay, delivered). Right now, they would get notices for most important EJ changes but might not be able to tell readily what is new or if it pertains to their particular site of interest when they get to the county section. For this reason, OEJ is seeking to achieve notices with each new posted document attached directly to the email notice (presumably a direct link to any new document might suffice). OEJ would also prefer an ability to sign up for notices specific to one particular site, and perhaps have some choices to be notified within some distance to a home address and/or keep the county-level signup.
We could come closer to the desired objective by keeping the current notice trigger while updating the web display to find what is of interest more readily, perhaps with some combo of:
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a “posted x days ago” tag to each document, like social media posts, possibly coloring them to highlight recent things,
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Hiding closed EJ items behind an “closed/archived/past events” link per county (seems inevitable over time anyway)
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Color coding or otherwise adding some status indicator to each site row
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Re-organizing each county into sections by site status
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Creating a new variable date field for sorting (like “future action date” that is either the hearing date, some latest comment due date)
With good visual design, such changes might orient a customer to the latest info with one click and no real investigation needed. Although some customers with narrow focus would still be faced with opening several emails in order to see they don’t interest them.
full project design SOW proposal (including DEP comments/input) and associated funding approved at roughly $250k to develop/implement full solution. Funding approved 12/10/24.
Initial in-person requirements gathering session held 9/27/2024 with DEP and Carrollton. See attached “Personas” document resulting from that session. Follow-up sessions being scheduled.
Approving attached attached Draft Business Proposal to conduct requirements gathering/JAD/Design. Once completed, will evaluate whether we move forward with development project
meeting coming up with Carrolton today
At 3/19/24 EJ Check-In, Pete shared that the interest from the latest IT Project sheet is being investigated in three forums: With CGI, with a Carrollton and with the Office of Innovation.
Meeting in Feb 2024 with Gov Delivery - came away understanding they would at best be able to provide part of the solution. Looking more into Carrolton or others next.
An interim internal solution is about ready but not published yet. A new IT sheet was submitted by Kandyce 1/25/24 and is attached here as of 2/7/24. A meeting is being set by Jim B. to include Rich and Pete and Knute to discuss options for going beyond our internal solution, even if it gets released while developing the optimal solution. We noted today that the optimal solution allowing for customers to choose direct delivery of documents is likely to have demand that will not be easily turned down to enable such features more broadly across DEP decision points and documents, independent of EJ law elements or qualifiers.
At some point in July 2023 we had discussions that included Rich Hyjack to explore the potential of adding more info to the current county view so that subscribers sent a message to come see an update could easily identify which item was new or changed or at least be able to see all items or entity rows sorted by their displayed latest update/posted date. Rich and team were going to make some edits to include these dates in a new column and see where/how they might re-sort and/or allow for user selected sorts (and return to default) based on most recent document date. The current default sort is on a “Date” column that appears to be the date of the public hearing, with most counties showing many more past hearings (bottom) than future hearings (top), and with most new postings of files (recordings, transcripts, decisions, etc.) occurring among the older records at the bottom.
At the 6/12 EJ check in meeting OPPN and DOIT debated the case for keeping the current trigger at the county level as it functions now. Besides avoiding possibly high re-engineering or procurement costs (NJDEP is not Amazon and would likely need to build custom tools), this serves a goal of encouraging wider awareness of all activities in a citizen's home county. Dave Pepe was prepared to take this case to leadership along with appreciation of cost/complexity to mimic sophistication on par with Amazon or others.
Having no obvious path to idealized notification, there is a case for waiting to see how customers view and use the current notice system, and then possibly enhancing the web view for clearer focus on what is new or of interest as outlined in the Description.