### Government News Exchange via XML

*By Asis Unyapoth, Piya Tanthawichian, and Thaweesak Koanantakool*

*Government Information Technology Services*

*National Electronics and Computer Technology Center*

*Ministry of Science Technology and Environment*

*Government of Thailand*

 

## Background

News and up-to-date information are vital in government administration.
Realizing this, Thai government offices try to keep their employees
informed of relevant news. The Ministry of Science, for example,
regularly circulates news from its subdivisions and departments, as well
as science and technology news from newspapers and other media. In the
past, publication on paper was the only means of circulation. Now,
encouraged by the Thai e-government policy, the Internet has been
increasingly exploited by the government. Posting news and announcements
on the Internet not only reduces publication costs, but also gives
members of the public access to government news and announcements.

 

Nevertheless, there is no easy way to gather relevant news. Typically,
each government office employs some human readers for scanning news
sources for related information and posting such information on the
office Web site. This approach is clearly inefficient and expensive. In
this article, we shall discuss an XML technology that supplies
government Web sites with the latest news from both government news
sources and online newspapers.

 

**The Model**

The technology developed is based on the model of establishing a **news
exchange** **center.** News can be dynamically obtained from the news
center via Web interfaces, by specifying categories, sources, keywords,
dates, and so on. The news obtained can then be processed and put on Web
sites. News retrieval and processing can be done each time the Web sites
are loaded, ensuring that Web site news is up-to-date.

 

Since the news center deals with a large number of sources, news
published by these sources must be in the same format, otherwise, the
government would need to maintain a different program for each source.
This is where XML technology fits in. From the news classification and
analysis point of view, XML provides an unambiguous way of identifying
information. Each piece of news can be clearly marked up---indicating
the headline, published date, source, category, and keyword, as shown
below.

 

\<news\>

\<title\>Army kicks off new smart ID cards\</title\>

\<link\> <http://www.msnbc.com/news/648418.asp?0si=-&cp1=1>\</link\>

\<pubdate\>10/29/2001\</pubdate\>

\<source\>CNN\</source\>

\<sourcelink\>[http://cnn.com](http://cnn.com/)\</sourcelink\>

\<category\>Technology\</category\>

\</news\>

 

News distributed from the news center to Web sites also uses this XML
format. One advantage is that XML separates [presentation]{.underline}
from [information]{.underline}*.* When a Web site obtains the XML news,
it can transform the XML format (using XSL or other techniques) into
HTML format, with the style (color, font, etc.) tailored for that
particular Web site.

 

Note that the full content of news is not included in the above format.
The news distributed using this format only contains information
sufficient for readers to determine what news is of interest to them. If
readers wish to pursue the content, they can click on the Web link and
read the entire story from the news sources.

 

## The Prototype 

![](media/image1.png){width="2.8118055555555554in"
height="1.9965277777777777in"}

A prototype of the news exchange center has been implemented. In
cooperation with [*Manager Online*](http://www.manager.co.th/), a Thai
broadsheet newspaper, the news center is constantly supplied with a wide
range of news, from breaking news to entertainment and columnist news.
Manager Online (and most online newspapers) uses a database to store
details of news---news pages are constructed dynamically using
technology such as active server pages (ASP). The news source,
therefore, has no difficulty in providing news for the news center,
since news could be easily retrieved and presented in the XML format.

 

In our experience, most government offices use ad hoc approaches for
publishing their news on the Web, typically by creating an HTML for each
piece of news and adding a link to it on the main Web site. In this
case, producing news in the XML format could be seen as extra work for
the Web masters. One of our services,
[*GNews*,](http://gnews.gits.net.th/) relieves Web masters of these
tedious tasks. Registered Web masters (currently limited to government
agents) are able to post news and announcements via a Web form. The
details of the news posted will then be stored in a database and
accessible via active server pages. Recently, we extended *GNews*
service so that when a piece of news is submitted to *GNews*, it is also
uploaded to the news exchange center---and thus will instantly appear on
Web sites that register their interest for such news.

 

News retrieved from these sources can be read directly from the project
Web site, *[thaisarn.com](http://www.thaisarn.com/).* The technique of
dynamic news retrieval has been used by the Thai government portal site,
[*thaigov.net*](http://www.thaigov.net/) to keep the Web site
up-to-date.

 

## Conclusions and Future Work 

The news exchange center project is still in its infancy. Nevertheless,
many Web sites and news sources have expressed interest in the project.
News sources are keen to cooperate in providing news in the XML format,
because it potentially increases access to their Web sites. Web masters
are keen to use this technology because it keeps the news on their Web
sites up-to-date. The main obstacle is technical: different systems use
different ways of dealing with XML. Advice to Web masters and news
sources has to be given on a case-by-case basis.

 

On the technical side, the prototype described still requires further
improvements, for example, an ability to deal with complex news
retrieval. We are also interested in imposing some secure infrastructure
that guarantees the confidentiality of news intended for specific groups
of readers. Internal news, for example, might be intended for
circulation only within an organization and require some authentication
mechanism.

 

## Related Works and Technology

Some of the ideas originated from the use of Resource Description File
(RDF) and RSS formats (which are dialects of XML) for distributing news,
as exploited by Web sites such as
[*my.userland.com*](http://my.userland.com/). The International Press
Telecommunications Council (IPTC) also proposes NewsML, an XML standard
for news publication. These formats are still under development and are
yet to become standard. We reject the RSS format because it provides
insufficient tags---none for identifying date, category, and keywords.
The NewsML format is also rejected because it is intended for
representation of news content, taking into consideration multimedia
copyright information, which makes the format highly complex.

 

*For more information, contact Asis Unyapoth by telephone at+
662-642-7077 ext. 8310 or via e-mail at <asis@gits.net.th>; Piya
Tanthawichian via e-mail at <piya@gits.net.th>; or Thaweesak
Koanantakool via e-mail at <htk@nectec.or.th>.*