Ian Cuddy

Published: 3 April 2009

A new national campaign kicks off on Monday to get every UK council website using RSS news feeds, PSF can report.

For the uninitiated, an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is basically a listing of story headlines which gets updated whenever new content is published. Virtually all blogs and most news websites provide an RSS feed (except for PSF but it's coming soon – honestly). Users can subscribe to the feed and receive updates automatically via any RSS Reader, such as Google Reader, NetVibes or any supporting web browser, without needing to revisit the site. Feeds can also be displayed on third-party websites. As they include a link back to the full content on the originating website, RSS feeds can help to increase web traffic and encourage return visitors.

The aforementioned campaign to make sure all councils have RSS feeds is the brainchild of 'Mash the State' - a project set up by a group of civicly-minded individuals who share the view that government should break down the legal and technical barriers to its data.

Their first campaign is calling on all UK councils to serve up their news as an 'autodiscoverable' RSS feed by Christmas 2009. Autodiscovery basically involves councils placing a small piece of code in the website so the user's web browser can automatically find the RSS feed. The plan is to publish a list of all UK councils showing which have RSS feeds and which don't, along with a 'progress bar' which will be updated daily and hopefully reach 100% by Christmas.

Adrian Short, Mash The State's spokesperson, told PSF also this all seems rather modest, it will means hundreds of councils changing the way they think about the web (whether they realise it or not). Research by the group suggests just 15% of the UK's 470-plus local authorities provide RSS feeds, and around a quarter of those who do aren't using auto-discovery (AD).

'It's very important – not just for us – that councils that have feeds start using AD', he said. 'Those that don't will be listed as not having feeds. This may seem wrong but it's actually central to the whole exercise: providing facilities for machine-readable data and services as well as human-readable ones, though AD is very good for human users too.'

We asked Short exactly how this list of feeds would be kept updated – having visions of an unsustainable Local Directgov-style scenario whereby councils have the ongoing burden of maintaining the links on a third-party website.

Fortunately, Mash the State has thought about that. Apparently they have developed software for this, which is already written and completely automates the process. The software runs once a day and can survey the whole country in 10 minutes without any human intervention. Thus Mash the State's database of council RSS feeds will never be more than 24 hours out of date.

'It took longer to do the manual survey [of council websites] once than it took to write the software to do the automated one', said Short. 'That should give you an idea of the power of these systems when done properly.'

But why councils, and not other public bodies? Mash the State is initially focussing on local authorities as they, said Short, are the government bodies which have the most direct, local relationships with citizens. Future campaigns will be covering other parts of the public sector.

And why news? 'We think it's the easiest place to start', he added, 'both in technical and strategic terms'. For some councils, providing an RSS feed will merely require turning on a feature in their content management systems. Says Short: 'For most councils it won't require more than half a day's work for a programmer or web designer.

'We also chose news because we think it's the easiest type of data for the public to work with. Many people will just want to subscribe to their council's RSS feed in their feed readers. Other will want to put their council's news headlines in the sidebars of their blogs and local websites. Some will want to feed their council's news through to social networking sites like Twitter.'

'More ambitiously', he continued, 'web developers will be able build powerful applications allowing council news from across the country to be read, search and categorised. Doubtless there are numerous other applications which neither we nor the councils can currently imagine.

'If the data is available and there's a demand, someone will be build it.'

And proving they practice what they preach, the data they download will be made free for anyone to download. The Mash the State website will also include good practice advice on how to produce RSS feeds and how to make it easy for people (and IT systems) to find and subscribe to them.

Mash the State would really like to hear from councils who are already producing RSS feeds and also those keen to implement but want to discuss any legal, technical or strategic issues. You can contact Adrian at adrian.short@gmail.com or on Twitter @adrianshort.

The Mash The State website is now live at www.mashthestate.org.uk