
Government Opened Data via APIs in 2011 - apievangelist
http://blog.apievangelist.com/2011/12/31/government-opened-data-via-apis-in-2011/#.Tv95flnURAk.hackernews
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Duff
Beware of "open data" cheerleaders. Several of these things are simply resume
fodder -- the CIO announces this amazing API at a fancy conference, (living it
up traveling on the taxpayer dime) and the open data people fawn all over
them. Value/substance of the API? Zero.

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apievangelist
Also see where they release a junk API as "open" while selling accessing to
the same data behind the scenes.

All of these types of APIs need to be identified. We need a way to high grade
them and make it known when they don't have any value.

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keltex
I was excited to look at the USA Search API:

<http://search.usa.gov/api>

I assumed it would have census data, etc. But disappointed to find out it only
has one api: product recalls.

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danso
This is a nice listing to explore but I have to object to the OP's optimistic
tone of "the government is listening to us, so let's make some apps"

Look deeper and you'll see that many of these APIs are junk, particularly the
crime reports (week-period aggregates are useless). The reason why developers
don't make apps is because the data is incomplete and non-normalized and
redacted in unknown ways. Making apps out of the data is a poor use of time
and helps to obscure the failure of government to modernize their data
collection and publishing systems.

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colinloretz
We organized and hosted Hack4Reno, which was Reno's first open data hackathon
and what we discovered is that the government is listening but they are not
equipped with the knowledge or the tools to provide the information in a
useful, meaningful way. If you talk to the individual departments and
agencies, they all love the _idea_ of being able to have a better handle on
the information they have so that both internal and external applications and
reports. Doing so would allow the departments to make better decisions and
ideally make a more informed and engaged citizenry.

Most of the datasets we provided for Hack4Reno were things that we found by
scouring local government websites and finding random static spreadsheets and
pdf documents. In some cases, we actually had data delivered to us on a burned
CD or via flat files in FTP. It blew our mind since most of us were so used to
consuming APIs to get real, timely data.

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donald_draper
Still waiting for the embassy cables API.

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apievangelist
oooh. I think that would be a popular one. Who still has the data? Who will
keep updated when new data gets leaked. Winner!

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donald_draper
I mean live data ;-)

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apievangelist
Extreme transparency

