Your Content Is Free, but Is It Liberated?

Background:  Web content at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- and most all US government web content – is in the public domain. The public has the right to use it free of charge and generally without worry about copyright law. Web content, much like print, has traditionally been trapped in the page on which it was published. It could be copied and reused elsewhere, but once original source files were updated, the copied snippets became outdated. Any other files containing the same content also had to be retrieved and updated.   As we become more mobile, we increasingly expect that content follow us, find us, and inform us in just the right configuration, and at just the right depth, for whatever device, channel, and platform we happen to use. It is increasingly important that our content be liberated from the constraints of a particular channel or display, and just as importantly, be updated once at the source and republished automatically across multiple channels.

Program background:  CDC’s  API-driven syndication service makes it possible to liberate content and simultaneously update and display it on the main CDC.gov web site, the mobile site at m.cdc.gov, RSS feeds, eCards,  iPad, iPhone and Android mobile applications. Multiple state and local governments are using the service to include CDC web content on their own sites. In the private sector, Microsoft Bing has syndicated several CDC Features into selected search results, allowing visitors to access CDC content directly on the Bing site. CDC has developed active partnerships with other federal agencies to promote the use of syndicated content where it makes the most sense. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) uses the system to streamline influenza content collection from CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to maintain Flu.gov and Vaccines.gov.  FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, NIAID and HHS are now syndicating their content through compatible APIs for their partners to use.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  CDC collects data on domains and URLs displaying syndicated content, page views, click-throughs, and registered partners. CDC’s syndicated content accounted for an additional 1.2 million page views in 2011, and was accomplished through more than 700 registered partners in all 50 US states, the District of Columbia and 15 countries.

Conclusions:  Content liberating APIs allow providers to maintain content in one location and publish it through multiple channels, such as mobile apps, widgets and web sites. When CDC updates its content, public and private sector partners know that those updates will happen simultaneously in the syndicated portions of their own sites, widgets, and apps. Syndication allows us to work across multiple channels much more efficiently and it liberates our content to go where our audiences will most easily find it.

Implications for research and/or practice:  CDC has provided the .NET code for the system to the FDA and NIAID for their reuse, is working with DHHS to produce a Java version and will be releasing the code as an Open Source project for all to use in the near future.