RSS Feeds

What is RSS?

RSS (which stands for Rich Site Syndication or Really Simple Syndication) is a simple way to improve how you interact with the websites that you visit regularly. It is intended to save you time, keep you better informed, and make it easier for you to track information on a large quantity of websites without having to go through the process of visiting each of them individually to manually look for changes.

Who should consider using our RSS feed:

Members of the media required to keep up to date with news and information published on our website.
Investors who want to stay current regarding information on our Treasury securities.
Anyone who regularly visits our website for news and information.

The three major components of RSS

The website from which you, the user, would like to receive information.
The actual information.
A program that allows you to receive and view the information.

Definition of RSS

RSS, for the purposes of our web site, is simply an Internet technology that informs you of when a website has been updated or changed without you having to navigate to the actual website itself. It enables you to read a summary or headline from each update individually. RSS 'feeds' can be compared to radio broadcasts, with each website that implements them acting like a radio station sending out a transmission, and each person that receives them as a radio listener who simply turns on their radio, presses their favorite station's button, and receives the broadcast.

Everyone with a radio (in RSS terms called a news aggregator program) can receive the broadcast without ever having to drive down to the radio station itself. Similarly with RSS, every web user can receive the website's broadcast without ever having to go to the website itself. Essentially, your "RSS Radio" (news aggregator) lets you flip through various stations to see what's been happening. It will list the headlines and summaries of updates on each website you subscribe to, and present you with a link to each entry that takes you directly to the full update on the website from which it was broadcast. There are many free news aggregators, some you can use through a browser window, and some you can download and run independently.

What's a "News Aggregator"?

A news aggregator is simply a program that collects RSS feeds from websites that implement them and presents them to you in an organized, navigable interface. Similar to how e-mail software lets you read and sort e-mail, news aggregators let you read and/or sort RSS feeds.

How to begin using RSS feeds:

There are a lot of different options for news aggregators. They all let you read headlines from dozens or hundreds of news sites at one time. You simply plug in the addresses of the RSS files you want.

Click on the 'XML' button above for the subject that you want. It will take you to a page with the XML code. All you need to do when this page appears is to copy and paste the URL in your browser address window to your aggregator. This is a slightly different process for each aggregator, so look at the instructions for your particular aggregator.

If you're having difficulty using our RSS feeds with your reader, feel free to contact us.