[Sml] Re: Use Cases for Structured-Email Mailing Lists: Civic Technology

[Adam Sobieski <[e-mail]>]

Steve,

Arguing for structured email as a component: email is ubiquitous, people know their email addresses, and people already know how to make use of Web-based forms to add themselves to or remove themselves from the mailing lists of their cities and local newspapers. It is a simple process to enter one's email address into a Web-based form and receive confirmation hyperlinks. Machine-to-machine scenarios would be but one use of communities' mailing lists.

Meanwhile, more tech-savvy end-users know what RSS/Atom/JSON structured feeds are, how to copy and paste these endpoints into their various software applications, and how to connect and disconnect their AI assistants from these feeds.

These machine-to-machine protocols would, indeed, be useful for the shared civic-technology scenarios. Structured emails could be a means: (1) to initiate contact for a protocol switch; in this case, for people's AI assistants to subscribe to structured feeds; (2) to otherwise advertise available services to people and their AI assistants.

Ideally, people would be able to opt to receive traditional and structured email messages from their cities and local newspapers. One structured email message which people might receive, early on, could include corresponding RSS, Atom, or JSON feeds intended for their AI assistants. Processes should be simple for end-users (clicking on a hyperlink and, perhaps, a permissions popup) to allow their AI assistants to consume these data. These structured email messages would also, as envisioned, include hyperlinks for people to use to disconnect their AI assistants from these feeds and/or clear instructions for how to do so from their assistants' settings and configurations.

Alternatively, cities' and local newspapers' websites could provide buttons and/or hyperlinks for people to make use of for these purposes. Permissions popups could be presented to end-users for their interoperating AI assistants to be subscribed to or unsubscribed from one or more available machine-to-machine RSS/Atom/JSON endpoints.

There are multiple approaches possible to provide these features for end-users. Thank you.


Best regards,
Adam

________________________________
From: Steve Atkins <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2025 5:46 AM
To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Subject: [Sml] Re: Use Cases for Structured-Email Mailing Lists: Civic Technology



On 28 Aug 2025, at 06:11, Adam Sobieski <[e-mail]> wrote:

IETF Structured Email Working Group,

With solutions for addressing recipients' (AI) assistants now at hand, I would like to share a list of scenarios for structured-email mailing lists which pertain to (town- and city-scale) civic technology. People's town and city governments and/or their local newspapers (see: [1]) could use structured-email mailing lists to provide people with new services, features, and conveniences.

For human recipients, the frequency of their communities' emails could be challenging, daunting, or problematic, i.e., information overload. However, people's AI assistants can readily receive more frequent structured-email messages from their local governments and/or local newspapers to process and organize structured data, synchronize these data (e.g., to people's calendar view apps), and prepare to answer users' questions or to offer them well-timed notifications.

You make a compelling argument that email is not well-suited to this sort of data.

Perhaps you should consider some sort of machine-to-machine protocol, maybe RSS.

Cheers,
  Steve