U.S. Government RSS Library Debuts on FirstGov

GSA #10157

May 9, 2005
Contact: Jeffrey Woodworth (202) 501-1231
jeffrey.woodworth@gsa.gov

Washington, D.C. – A U.S. Government RSS Library is now available on www.FirstGov.gov.    RSS feeds are an easy way for citizens to keep up with rapidly changing government news and information.

RSS has several meanings: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and RDF Site Summary, where RDF stands for Resource Data Framework.  Although RSS feeds are relatively new, FirstGov is making it easier for the public to find them by providing a centralized Government RSS Library that organizes information by topic.

The FirstGov U.S. Government RSS Library in the FirstGov Reference Section, currently provides links to feeds on agriculture, consumer, cyber security, data and statistics, federal personnel, health, international relations, military affairs, forests, and science.  You can find the FirstGov RSS Library at: http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Libraries/RSS_Library.shtml

Until now, government RSS feeds have been largely scattered across government websites leaving a citizen no central place to easily find them.  The only way the public could find government RSS feeds was to know which agency provided a particular feed and by going to each individual website to subscribe to the feed.  

Web users are finding RSS to be an efficient method of keeping up with current news that interests them.  RSS saves users from having to repeatedly visit favorite websites to check for new content or be notified of updates via email.  Instead, article summaries are delivered to users, and if a summary is of interest, the user can then choose to visit the website.