I’ve had this curious missive out from ACTGOVMedia:
Dear subscriber
The website (www.chiefminister.act.gov.au) and subscription service will be closing down permanently in the next few weeks.
ACT Government Minister’s media releases and ACT Government Directorate’s media releases will be uploaded to the ACT Open Government website at www.cmd.act.gov.au/open_government. If you wish to continue to receive ACT Government media releases you will be required to subscribe to the RSS feed of this site. You will be able to subscribe at a later date.
RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed. Web users are then able to subscribe to the RSS Feeds. RSS allows web users to easily stay informed by receiving the latest content from the sites they are interested in, rather than having to visit each site individually. Users have greater privacy by not having to join each site’s email list.
Further updates will be emailed to inform current subscribers about the status of the media release transfer to the Open Government website.
For more information please email ACTGOVMedia@act.gov.au
regards
Maria Evans |Communications Officer
Communications and Engagement | Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate | ACT Government
Level 4 Canberra Nara Centre 1 Constitution Avenue Canberra ACT 2601 | GPO Box 158 Canberra ACT 2601 | www.act.gov.au
At the moment at least if you divine that “inform” is the option for information it links back to the soon to be decommissioned page.
One hopes this doesn’t mean government media releases will no longer be posted online for the public to access without stroking the egos of press secretaries.
That would be a positively Orwellian way to implement “Open Government”.
Some points to consider:
- 1. Moving from an email list and website to an RSS feed is a backwards step in terms of general accessibility.
2. There is almost no cost whatsover to automatically feeding information from one page to another.
3. Looking at the Open Government site who can see where the RSS feed is?
4. Discontinuing an email list, that has been in operation for a great many years, is sure to reduce the number of people in possession of government media releases. Again not a very “Open” way to disseminate information.
5. It shouldn’t take a professional more than 10 minutes to get an rss converter continuing the email distribution list from whatever source the ACT Government chooses to run it.
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