RDF Site Summary - RSS
RSS at a glance
Business Overview
RDF Site Summary is a simple and effective facility for government agencies to improve the reliability and circulation of news items and public notices. It allows the agency to notify web-based news portals and syndicated news sites of their news items.
News syndication processes and news portals are extensively used in the world of electronic web publishing. The benefits of using RSS for news item notification include:
- Increased circulation and public awareness of government announcements and notices
- Automated republication of content
- Targeted news items to geographic regions within NZ
- Controlled news item time validity by setting start and end dates on news items
- Standardised government agency news item management, giving improved communications personnel efficiency and effectiveness
A government agency that already has its own web site with news or announcement pages can quickly and easily submit news items toNZ Government News. Experienced web technicians can usually install and configure software for processing RSS messages in a few days.
Technical Overview
RSS is the XML standard adopted by the State Services Commission. RSS manages news releases from government agencies in three ways:
- An agency provides news feeds in RSS format to EGU
- EGU operates a news fetch, which collects and aggregates news stories across participating agencies
- EGU operates a news syndication service, which allows organisations (including government agencies) to subscribe to the aggregated news feed.
In this context, 'news' includes media releases and event-related content generated by government agencies for public consumption. The news is not restricted in media or outlet.
The e-GIF management committee agreed to adopt RSS V1.0 as the recommended standard in March 2005. The e-GIF team notified government agencies by letter of the adoption of the standard after that meeting.
The reasons for adopting RSS are summarised in Why RSS?
RSS conforms to W3C's RDF Specification and is extensible using either XML-namespace or RDF based modularisation.
End-user web page software tools, such as Dreamweaver, now provide facilities for RSS message generation and processing.
For help with implementing RSS, news feed approvals, and implementation checklists, see the RSS Starter Kit.
Further Details
For more details about RSS in e-GIF interoperability, see:
