New Zealand e-government RSS ahead

I think RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is one of the best examples of what I called emergent technology. By this I mean technology that has been designed by users for users rather than by a top down process. This is an article by Richard MacManus submitted to Computerworld NZ, based on an interview with Ferry Hendrikx of the NZ E-Government Unit. The target audience is mainstream IT people, so as well as writing about Ferry’s experiences in E-Government, the author decided to also explain what RSS is and put it in the context of everyday IT.

RSS is an XML-based standard for syndication of news and other regularly-updated content. It is being widely adopted as a form of online publishing - The New York Times and Reuters are just two big-name publishers who now offer RSS “feeds”. The New Zealand Government began using RSS feeds in 2003 to publish government news to the public. In July 2003 the New Zealand E-Government Unit released a document entitled “A standard for the publication of government news summaries”, which outlined their vision for RSS in the New Zealand public sector. I interviewed the document’s author Ferry Hendrikx, from the New Zealand E-Government Unit.

Mr MacManus mentions New York Times and Reuters, but closer to home, the Daily Telegraph and the BBC, have been using it for some time now to enable feeds for RSS newsreaders.

The case for RSS rests in one of the components of the New Zealand E-Government strategy, known as ‘publish/subscribe’ on the Web. The E-Government Strategy document published in 2001 declared that the Internet should be the dominant means of enabling ready access to government information, services and processes by June 2004.

The publish/subscribe model is seen as one of a number of ways of making information available and confirms it is one of our key goals. RSS can be used by the government both for distribution of information to the public and as well as internally. Hendrikx asserts that this model is equally useful for making information available for both public and internal consumption. This is what the report recommends:

This standard should be used by all agencies wishing to make their news stories available beyond their own website. Specifically agencies can use this system to avoid the manual and often duplicate entry of news stories onto the government portal.

Agencies implementing this standard and making news feeds available will need to notify the E-government Unit so that the aggregator can be appropriately configured to harvest news feeds from agency web servers.

The rest of the article contains some technical description of RSS, its history and the discussion of the format chosen by the New Zealand government. What is more interesting is that the potential RSS and other XML feeds have for dynamic and often updated formats. This is why most blogs automatically enable their readers to subscribe to updated content via their newsreaders.

Now, once more, without the acronyms:

Having a way to get regular updates from a source you trust and want to follow without remembering to check it regularly is certainly convenient.
Although updates by email can do that, our inboxes are already full of messages that we are not really interested in. The pull nature of syndication feeds puts the receivers of the information in control, as they can remove the feeds from their news aggregators.
Newreaders allow you to aggregate feeds from various blogs and websites, which save much time. You do not have to download each page to read the content and you can avoid reading articles whose headlines do not interest you. This is a major advantage for someone (like me) who follows 60+ blogs that are updated a daily.

In fact, there are two ways to subscribe to updates from Ideal Government. You can either join the mailing list or add Ideal Government feed to your newsreader. Those who wish to learn more about the RSS magic, can email me at adriana at bigblog dot net.

Published by Adriana Cronin-Lukas on 20/09/04 at 9:23am

Comments

I totally ree with Adriana that the UK government should make stronger moves to endorse and utilise RSS.

I was about to make a new post so I’ll leave it there and try not to double up.

Reply by Michela Ledwidge on 10/14/04 at 4:49 pm
skufddnr wxfujnvg szhjzrao http://dyuggxda.com zdqshwui owbaxdnf

Reply by mfrlmsvv on 07/10/07 at 8:05 pm
efnqbjdv ujsuugvg http://zqgptrlu.com bdenxmqv uuphxksd nalhwdry

Reply by zmhomvdw on 07/15/07 at 9:31 am
jppazizm unbnxgzf qlwpysba http://iylbsgdk.com jojomcjh xwgrxefd

Reply by qpyrxncg on 09/07/07 at 11:15 pm
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Reply by order valium online on 09/09/07 at 9:33 pm
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!

Reply by metformin on 09/10/07 at 1:04 am
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

Reply by cetirizine on 09/10/07 at 4:50 am
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.

Reply by generic prilosec on 09/10/07 at 7:52 am
I like weights. You know where you stand with them. Well, sometimes you’re lying under them, trying not to let them crush you, but you see, you KNOW they’d crush you if they could. There’s honesty.

Reply by sumatriptan on 09/10/07 at 11:12 am
So little time and so little to do.

Reply by generic norvasc on 09/10/07 at 2:44 pm
ykowhoak uekebcat wxozmaxs http://uhenzfko.com irftqrom xadjevrw

Reply by axihdbbs on 09/13/07 at 4:50 pm

Next entry: How like Finland do we want to be?

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

Comment

Anyone is free to comment. Or mail with an article if you want to be an author. I'll post it up and send you a password. This whole thing is supported by Kable.

Authors

Member List

Sign up for new articles

New Zealand e-government RSS ahead

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics

New Zealand e-government RSS ahead

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Sponsor

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics