stimulating

I've been banging on about RSS for years now. More accurately perhaps I used to bang on about it years ago.

I've learned from BoingBoing, however that the "Initial Implementing Guidance for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" requires RSS (in Apprendix 1 to be precise):

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. Note that the required information can be supplied in the feed or the feed can point to a file at the agency using the convention noted below. If an agency is immediately unable to publish feeds, the agency should post each near term information flow (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) to a URL directory convention suggested below: www.agency.gov/recovery/year/month/date/reporttype.

It is expected that the information files will be posted at the following URLs:
• Major Communications: www.HUD.gov/recovery/2009/02/16/comms
• Formula Block Grant Allocation: www.HUD.gov/recovery/2009/02/16/fbga
• Weekly Report: www.HUD.gov/recovery/2009/03/01/weekly

I'm astounded. This is beyond anything I imagined.