Government Opened Data via APIs in 2011 | Hacker News Reader

Government Opened Data via APIs in 2011

blog.apievangelist.com

32 pointsapievangelist10 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Extremely true observation. Even though I'm optimistic about what we can do with these APIs....you are definitely spot on in your objection.

Let's keep the heat on with government agencies to keep opening up data....complete sets...and maintain and keep active.

Still waiting for the embassy cables API.

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

I mean live data ;-)

Extreme transparency

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