Recently Network Administrator at Noosa Council, Justin Thomas, suggested via our online feedback that FOCUS introduce Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to our website. www.lgfocus.com.au was established nine years ago and has all editions since May 1996 available. As an electronic archive of key issues and best practice by Councils across Australia, it is a useful research tool as well as providing current news and key events impacting the Local Government sector. As part of our 20 year celebrations, FOCUS is pleased to announce it has taken up Justin’s suggestion. RSS enables Councils to have FOCUS updates immediately available to staff via their Intranet. Justin Thomas explains below why Noosa has become the first Council to make use of this free service.
Whenever any Noosa Council staff open their Internet web browser they are presented with the Council’s Intranet start page making the intranet a valuable communications tool. Recently the Intranet was rebuilt to make it more attractive and useful for staff. The redesign included placing notices and news articles on the front page to grab the attention of readers and promote the site as a dynamic and relevant site.
While internal Council news is important, Councils can be very introspective missing opportunities to learn from other Councils. Exposing staff to outside news encourages the exchange of knowledge, ideas and practices.
Council participates in some forums that exchange knowledge but the information is locked away, not available to all staff and not ‘in your face’.
Placing this external news on the Intranet exposes it to staff who may not otherwise seek it out or even be aware of it. Ideally the news articles should not be too topic specific to appeal to a wide audience of staff, but not be outside of Local Government interests to avoid unnecessary distractions. However I was dismayed that I was unable to find a suitable news provider within Australia.
Newsfeeds were either too specific, for example Human Resources newsfeeds, or too general, such as ABC regional news. Nor could customised Google News newsfeeds based on keywords provide useful news due to duplication of news items.
Lack of a budget meant I was unable to use commercial news filtering and aggregation services. So I was delighted to hear that Local Government FOCUS would be providing a RSS feed of Local Government specific news information I could add to our Intranet.
FOCUS has a mix of Local Government specific articles from what Councils are doing including best practices to the larger issues confronting Local Government. By opening articles of interest staff are introduced to the Local Government FOCUS website where they can search older editions drawing on that archive of knowledge.
To publish the news, Noosa Council uses RSS with an Open Source Content Management System called Mambo.
RSS is a technology providing an inexpensive, automated method of listing news items from news providers. By simply specifying a news source address the news is added to the Intranet home page and automatically updated each time the Intranet page is opened. News items are listed with the article name and optionally a line or two of the article.
Staff can read the full content of articles they are interested in by clicking on the article headline. Staff can also use PC based software, including Microsoft Outlook addins to have RSS news items delivered straight to their desktop. Councils have both increasing demands for services and limited capacity to service that need. RSS newsfeeds provide a simple, inexpensive way to supply summarised and useful knowledge to staff. When used on the Intranet, staff are exposed to new knowledge and are encouraged to ‘think outside the square’ by reading about what other Councils are accomplishing.
For further information contact Justin Thomas email na@noosa.qld.gov.au or telephone (07) 5449 5319. To register for FOCUS RSS feeds click here.
