RSS Hits the Big Time

As chaunceyt pointed out, the new stimulus bill’s implementation instructions require that each government agency report the money it gives out in RSS:

For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content can be delivered via subscription.

The document is very clear that the items in the feed can’t simply be unstructured text, but have to be reusable data, e.g.:

Formula Block Grant Allocation Reports: Agencies are asked to provide Formula Block Grant Allocation information as soon as it becomes available. Data elements for the formula block grant allocation feed should include: Data Elements Description Field Type Recipient Name The name of the recipient of the award. varchar(45) Federal Funding Amount Amount of federal government’s obligation or contingent liability, in dollars. A negative number represents a decrease in funding. int(11) Recipient DUNS Unique nine-digit number issued by Dun & Bradstreet to the agency. Followed by an optional DUNS Plus 4 which allows an agency to submit different bank account data for a single DUNS (Assigned by Dun & Bradstreet) char(13) […]

And it goes on like this for several pages.

Pretty amazing to see a government so tech-savvy.

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February 21, 2009