Practical iCalendar feeds

December 5th, 2007 by Matthew Ross

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.

New Zealand HolidaysWe 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.

add calendar iconNew 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 add calendar iconWellington 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 add calendar iconNew 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 add calendar iconpersonalised GST, PAYE and Income Tax due dates for 2008-2009.

Summary

Subscribing to the four prototypes with Mozilla Sunbird gives the following overall view.
Sunbird showing January 2008

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.


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10 Responses to “Practical iCalendar feeds”

  1. Brent Chalmers says:

    I read a blog post recently where the Danish Government invested $400k to develop a free/busy calendar sharing service … they estimate it saves them $10m pa. Not a bad ROI. Even better, it is open source. Check out the blogpost here:

    http://calendarswamp.blogspot.com/2008/02/denmarks-visionary-free-busy.html

    There are links to the code and the site within the post.

  2. Matt H says:

    Great there is the ical data for public holidays.

    Is it possible to get them for 2009 and 2010?

    Cheers

    matt

  3. Matthew Ross says:

    Matt,

    I suggest you request that from the Department of Labour directly.

    Here:
    http://dolworkplace.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/dolworkplace.cfg/php/enduser/site_fdbck.php

    Also, let’s keep pushing the Ministry of Education for term dates in iCal format.

    Contact them here:
    http://www.minedu.govt.nz/AboutThisSite/ContactUs.aspx
    and
    http://www.teamup.co.nz/ContactUs.aspx

  4. Peter McNeur says:

    There do not seem to be any 2009 + entries in the iCalendar yet,

    This is a useful tool for us here at REAP, but not without dates.

    Thanks
    Peter

  5. Matthew Ross says:

    Good news - Department of Labour and Ministry of Education have agreed to publish ‘real’ iCalendars to replace our prototypes above. We are working with them now to build the feed data.

    If you are subscribed to one of our prototypes these will be redirected with a 301 redirect so you should continue to get data updates.

    I’ll post again here when there is a launch announcement.

  6. Anonymous says:

    The DoL downloads should have “all anniversary days” as an option.

  7. Matthew Ross says:

    New Zealand Public Holidays are live now here:
    http://ers.govt.nz/holidays_act_2003/dates/ical/

    A big thanks to Joseph Lindsay at Department of Labour!

  8. Matthew Ross says:

    New Zealand School Terms / Holidays are now at:

    http://www.minedu.govt.nz/theMinistry/EducationInNewZealand/SchoolTermsAndHolidays/iCalendarTermsAndHolidays.aspx

    Thanks to Dee Millar at the Ministry of Education.

  9. Edward Groenendaal says:

    Now if only the IRD would publish the provisional tax and tax return dates I’d be happy. It’s never good forgetting to pay your tax. A printed PDF stuck to my monitor doesn’t really sync very well to my iPod.

  10. Edward Groenendaal says:

    FYI I’m publishing the 2010 income tax dates that the IRD gave me at webcal://ical.me.com/eddyg/IRD%20Income%20Tax%20Due.ics

    or viewed in a calendar at:
    http://ical.me.com/eddyg/IRD%20Income%20Tax%20Due

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