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The City of New York
Queens Community Board 3
Technology Advisory Committee
Queens Community Board 3 passed the following resolution.
RSS Resolution
Background
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a protocol that enables the automatic distribution of information over the Internet. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be distributed using RSS, for example, the "recent changes" page of the city’s website, the 311 or 911 statistics, city council bills, comptroller audits, disease reports from hospitals, etc.
Once information about an item is made available using the RSS protocol, an RSS-reader can check for changes and react in a specified way. For example, a community board could program its RSS-reader to check the Police Department’s website every Monday at 7 AM to see if new crime statistics had been posted for its district.
With a staff of three and no IT support, it's quite difficult for a community board’s staff to operate a website. If RSS was used by all city agencies it would enable the board to program its RSS-reader once and consolidate updates from all city websites on its website.
Be it resolved:
That better communication between city agencies and between city agencies and the public can be facilitated by the use of RSS.
Therefore:
Queens Community Board 3 requests that all public information be made available in RSS and/or other syndication formats.
Resident Bottom Line: RSS makes it possible to review information from a large number of city websites in a very short time.
Community Board Bottom Line: RSS permits the simple, rapid, and inexpensive distribution of reports, alerts, calendar listings, and other information to residents.
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The background and open source for RSS here.
A general article about RSS can be found here.
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