I’m pinching myself. Wednesday, 08:30am: Justin Kerr-Stevens makes a request via OPSI’s Public Sector Information Unlocking Service. A couple of dozen people sign up to say ‘good idea’. A few people (me included) add some more substantial comments. Fast forward two days to Friday, 12:32pm: COI publishes details of RSS feeds for (virtually) every Cabinet-level government department.
I say ‘virtually’ every Cabinet-level department: the exceptions are the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices. I can’t see an RSS feed on the Scotland Office site; the NIO site’s feed is curious to say the least, showing just one update since Christmas (which clearly isn’t right). But the Wales Office is happily pumping out beautiful RSS. Puffbox and WordPress may have had something to do with that.
Gripes? The URLs are truly revolting. But that’s the biggest nit I can pick. Justin, COI, OPSI, Mr Watson – thank you all. Did that really just happen?
Update: I’m told they were on the site somewhere, just not obvious. Even knowing that now, I still can’t find where they were. And if you can’t find them, they might as well not be there. Next steps, please: an entry in the site’s primary navigation, nicer URLs, and auto-discovery tags on each department’s homepage.
Responses
Hmm: I wonder how it works.
I had a quick look at the source code… references to Glide Technologies (extra namespaces) lead us to ‘the leading UK provider of integrated press office software for international blue-chips (sic) organisations’.
And sure enough, if you look at another of the company’s clients, Orange, they’ve got an equally ugly URL for their RSS feed.
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