Research e-Labs

We demonstrate the potential for government web projects to deliver more usable and dynamic calendars using the iCalendar format.

iCalendar format is a standard for calendar data exchange that enables publishing of calendars or schedules on the web which can then be viewed on ’subscription’ by a compatible calendaring program. Microsoft finally delivered support for iCalendar subscriptions in Outlook 2007, although this is not yet of help to the government and corporate sector where a locked down version of Outlook 2003 is still the norm. Other common calendaring programs including Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning (open source), Apple iCal and Google Calendar have supported iCalendar for some time.

The important aspect of an iCalendar subscription is that the client program will periodically download the iCalendar data anew, to receive new and updated events. In this way, iCalendar functions as a data feed, conceptually similar to RSS. This is in contrast to the older concept of ‘importing’ a calendar which is a one-time process to load a snapshot of a calendar as it exists at a point in time.

By subscribing to iCalendar feeds a user can view the up-to-date status of multiple calendars which may be overlaid against their own personal calendar.

iCalendar on New Zealand Government web sites

iCalendar is not yet widely implemented on New Zealand Government web sites even though there are frequent examples of important calendar data being published. Publication of calendar information is generally in static html or pdf format.

We have sourced several examples of calendar data from major New Zealand Government web sites and built prototype iCalendar feeds based on this data to demonstrate the potential of iCalendar to deliver enhanced usability and dynamic delivery of data to the end user.

Get an iCalendar client

To experience the iCalendar prototypes below you will need an iCalendar compatible calendar program. If you don’t have one we can suggest Mozilla Sunbird which is open source, cross-platform, stand-alone and simple to download and install.

Prototype 1: New Zealand Public Holidays Calendar

The Department of Labour publishes New Zealand public holiday information as static html.

We have created a prototype iCalendar feed for New Zealand national holidays as well as for each province. Simply click on the link of any iCalendar you wish to subscribe to. Note that an iCalendar data file ends in .ics.

New Zealand national holiday iCalendar.

Provincial Calendars: Auckland | Canterbury | Chatham Islands | Hawkes’ Bay | Marlborough | Nelson | Otago | South Canterbury | Southland | Taranaki | Wellington | Westland

Prototype 2: Wellington City Council Events calendar

The Wellington City Council publishes upcoming events as static html including time and location information.

Our prototype Wellington Events iCalendar demonstrates iCalendar support for the structured publication of time and location data.

Exercise: if you subscribed to examples 1 and 2, you can view both together in your calendar program to help plan a holiday trip to Wellington!

Prototype 3: New Zealand School Terms

The Ministry of Education publishes school term dates and here at Team-Up as static html.

Here is our prototype New Zealand School Terms iCalendar.

Prototype 4: Inland Revenue Tax Due Dates

The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) currently provides an interactive Tax Date Calculator which generates personalised due dates in static html and pdf.

Here is the same data as a personalised GST, PAYE and Income Tax due dates for 2008-2009.

Summary

Subscribing to the four prototypes with Mozilla Sunbird gives the following overall view.

Now that support for iCalendar is established in the major calendaring programs, let’s hope we see web implementations of iCalendar in 2008 including on Government web sites.

Please contribute your comments including sightings of iCalendar implementations or important static calendar data that you would like to see published in iCalendar format.

Tags: ical, icalendar, New Zealand, school terms

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 1:30 am under Product Evaluations, Standards & Compliance. You can leave a response, or trackback from your site.