3 The business need

One of the key challenges facing government agencies is to disseminate information quickly and cost effectively to New Zealanders. While agencies have traditionally operated their own news pages on their own websites, the quantity of information is increasing and, due to the Internet, the need for fast and effective delivery is greater than ever.

The answer so far has been an increasingly costly one - to invest in expensive content management systems or manually update the sites and make extensive use of spiders in the hope that search engines pick up the item. As a result, multiple data entry, duplication of effort and text errors are all in evidence.

While these issues relate to the lack of an alternative service rather than the lack of a standard, the outcome still remains that news content circulation has been inhibited.

The SSC EGU saw the opportunity for a government news aggregation and syndication service where agencies can ensure their messages are widely publicised. The concept requires:

• a single agency to act as the hub to resource the service
• an agreed standard for coding content so that it is machine readable and capable of automatic and programmed republishing.