National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites Ideas

In the model of 'eating their own dog food', government agencies should not just offer the public APIs of all their front-facing content and data, but consume those APIs for their own products. This is not only more efficient but will reinforce the use of APIs as well as promote a better feedback loop whereby agencies will find and correct errors and improve the format of their public offerings. The FCC has opensourced ...more »

Many government agencies have overlapping and important data. NOAA, Federal Register, HHS, FCC, and others are beginning to offer more of it as APIs. As more agencies do the same, there are strong benefits and efficiences that can come from agencies making a point to consume each others APIs when creating new products for the public. They can create mashups of their own data with that of other agencies to create products ...more »

By changing the expectations for government websites to be that they make all of their content and data available via web services will change the game. Not only are there benefits for the webmasters when they eat their own dogfood, the public can also access, consume, republish, and further disseminate the information in ways that the originating agency hasn't considered and in ways which are more convenient for audiences ...more »

When .govs make their web content and data available to the public via web services (APIs), any one or any organization can republish the material in various ways that are more accessible to different communities. By liquefying the content of the website by publishing it as an API, the public can repurpose it in various ways that the originating agency might not think to or might not have done so on their own website. ...more »

Some government websites are offering data sets via webservices (e.g. APIs), in the model of NOAA's weather data that is consumed by many other websites dynamically. This is possible with the actual content of the website, too - press releases, blog posts, information pages, etc. The FCC has released a Drupal module that automatically publishes all of the content on the website via API - http://drupal.org/project/contentapi. ...more »

In the short and medium term, one of the best efforts that government websites can effect in order to better serve the public would be to offer webservices (e.g. RESTful APIs) of all website content and data. This way, any information the website is offering, including not just public data, but also the textual content of the site, can be consumed by the public in a much more powerful and efficient manner. Interested ...more »