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So, if you take a step back and ask: why are we doing challenges? Why did we build challenge.gov?
Why are you hearing more about APIs these days? Itís because, we have got to a place
where the old model, that we know is very monolithic, very frustrating, very cumbersome,
doesnít have to be that way. And weíve actually realized that things can be a lot more fluid,
a lot more productive, and we can satisfy our customers a lot better.
Easily the best example of this is we have yet to come across is always that of weather
data. National weather service, NOAA have succeeded in their implicit mission of providing
American, and every person within it, with up to date instant weather data in a great
way because I donít think any of us in this room actually pull out our phones and open
up the governments weather app. We pull out our phones and open up any of hundreds of
others. We use google, its integrated in our calendars, itís everywhere. Thatís just
a small, discreet, commonly used example, but itís one that has connotations for basically
anything we can think of at our agencies.
So, a number of parts have been coming together over the last months and years, but especially
months, and youíre going to be hearing more of it this spring around your agencies and
APIs. In May, the Digital Government Strategy came out and it said amongst other things:
that every agency has to be getting started with this. Weíve put together some material
at Howto.gov/api. If you havenít had a chance to check it out, I recommend it. And it is
something to maybe send around to some of your teammates, who have been kind of scratching
at the surface or wanting to learn more about APIs.
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But also, weíre going to be reaching out more, and actually to all of you and all of
your agencies, and making sure that this conversation is taking place there because no matter how
oblique or obscure your team or agencyís mission might be, let alone how relevant and
incredibly important, we know that all of us have information that we think is important
to give to the public and services we think is important to provide to the public. And
I guess what I would proffer is thinking about the fact that from now on, whether you do
it through a challenge or some other methodology, itís in our interest to let the public be
a force-multiplier for those missions. For getting that information in front of more
people, more readily, faster easier, better.
So, some early things weíre starting out with. You go to developer.data.gov, itís
a small section, still being kind of grown up and soft launched. But weíre trying to
put together, for developers, what are the different components we know they want from
us, government? Thereís access to all of the data at data.gov, but also if you go to
web services, youíll see that thereís an increasing number of agencies who are building
out their hubs, their hubs of APIs and code. If you go to source code youíll actually
see that thereís a lot of agencies putting more things into github, which is a process
that is very easy to actually just get started with and very virtuous. When you go to apps,
this was a section that we just recently are starting to flesh out and need to actually
flesh out a lot more, but weíre going to start highlighting a lot more, the successful
development projects that the public has done, businesses have done with our data and information.
So, weíre getting started. Iím actually going through right now and pulling out some
of the more visible sucesses in challenge.gov but would love to highlight your projects
here after they have been finished. And then also, up at the top, challenges,
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So we just changed that link over to a new category on challenge.gov thatís software.
Now you can see it along with science and technology etc, thereís software. And that
does seem a bit of a capricious distinction, but when we think about all of the challenges
weíre seeing, thereís a huge swath that have an intended audience of coders, of developers,
of app makers, and I think that we all know that there is a lot of potential that is burgeoning
up through this. So, I really want to encourage you, with any of the contests that youíre
starting up, with any of the challenges, that if itís relevant, you make sure itís here,
you make sure itís linked from that page because wherever weíre going, weíre encouraging
agencies to drive attention to this category, to drive people to this, and hopefully, even
if they donít see your project this time, theyíre going to understand that thatís
where they go back to look next week or next month. And then lastly, I guess what I would
say is, I really would beg you to recognize that APIs, which normally have a very geeky,wonkish
connotation to them, itís a mistake to worry about the technology. Just like itís a mistake
to worry about the details and minutia of the challenge. What weíre trying to do it
get things done. And what GSA is here to be is a resource for you. Whether itís, evangelizing
elsewhere in your agency, whether itís helping your team build a strategy for how you get
started for the APIs, for how you move forward with APIs, we want to help with that. And
sometimes, often times, itís a lot easier than you think. And when youíre thinking
about doing challenges, I canít tell you enough that you can just put a blind challenge
out there. You can say: hey world, we want you to build an app that does this great thing,
and wait. But, if you till the ground, if you fertilize the soil, if you basically do
a bit of prep work, which we would love to help you with,
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thatís going to have a dramatic difference whether you get 2 responses or 20 responses.
And one of those core elements can be concurrently launching an API for a dataset that you know
is very important and then partnering that with a challenge that says: hey world, what
can you do with this? Thereís a lot more to talk about on this. You can see Iím very
passionate about it and I will be around off on the side later but also Tammi can always
connect us. But at the end of the day, weíre getting in touch with all agencies and if
youíre not hearing from us, reach out because we want to be talking about this. Itís the
right time.
How do we contact you for help with APIs?
GSA has said: support government with this. So please, Iím happy to hop on the phone,
Iím happy to swing by your agency. We know that everyone is some state of becoming. Like
HHS which probably the most advanced part of government with APIs, theyíre still just
moving forward with so much more of what theyíre scratching the surface with. And a lot of
agencies havenít even begun. But wherever youíre at, I promise you, there are actually
very easy ways to get started. And one of things that people learn is that the third
API is a lot easier than the second, the fourth API is a lot easier than the third. And when
you donít get bogged down in the details, but you just kind of get started, itís going
to come a lot more naturally, youíre going to get a lot more comfortable with it, as
will your agency. But also, it starts getting you thinking about how you do your challenges.
Do you actually say: we know this is one of the most important datasets weíre putting
out and we think it could be in a lot more apps, a lot more websites, how can we be using
this? If right now, itís something that people can write in to the agency and get a CD of,
we know that there are ways to improve that, letís get it online. But even is, you just
put it online, in a giant zip file, that people have to go, they have to know where to look,
they have to download it,
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we can work with you to actually, depending on the circumstances, sometimes very easily,
get that up in such a way that instead of having to deal with a large monolithic file,
they can interact with an API and prototype something this afternoon. Hackers, developers,
people out there that you want to be playing with your data, thinking about including it
in their apps, they really care when you take that extra step to try and give it to them
in a more friendly way.
Is there a specific strategy for having APIs work best with the public?
At the end of the day, this isnít just about government doing this because itís the new
cool thing, itís about getting things done. So if you want some help and some perspective
about how agencies can be using APIs better, Iím always happy to talk
Are there other resources for those agencies new to APIs?
Weíve just been getting started. We actually had this same room and about 60 people in
here back in November for a half day conference on APIs. Weíre going to be scheduling another
one, looks like for the end of February, for the same point. Weíll be sending out on the
listservs on the content managers listservs some other, smaller events where you can either
sign on to a webinar, or weíre prototyping doing some google hangouts once a month for
people who want to talk about and want to commune with other agencies staff about APIs.
If you want to see stuff weíve done in the past, howto.gov/training has an API section
and we started at like the APIs 101 stage and got more safisticated. So your great-great-grandfather
can start with APIs 101 and start to begin with just the easiest examples, you can also
skip straight to the APIs 303 sections and dive in deep on some technical stuff.
Whatís the best way to give developers access to your data?
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Try to put as much of this as possible into howto.gov/api. And if you go to: How to Start
and API Program, and then also: Resources and Tools, thereís a section in there that
talks about different models for publishing APIs, and it ranges from the very simple and
kind of simplistic even to much more complex and ragged, and honestly, thereís different
answers, itís just a question of what is the right fit for you. At the end of the day,
I would say, get started, get feedback, iterate, repeat. Thereís a few core principles: itís
always important to actually publish the data just raw for download, thatís even more important
than getting an API up because usually if anything, they need to be able to download
it and play with it themselves too. But, thereís very straightforward ways in which you can
take a dataset and then make it something dynamic they can query. And Iím happy to
get in detail with that with any of you, and also with people from your team back at your
agency.
Do queries become more important as the size of the data set increases or gets more complex?
I would say, in essence yes, if somethingís very small. So GSA puts out some datasets
that are very relevant for millions of federal staff, but actually the current data is maybe
30 cells on a spreadsheet, like itís not all that much data. But, I think the move
here is to think about whatís the use case. If someone wants to map a very large dataset,
all at the same time, theyíre going to need that dataset. But, if youíre envisioning
that maybe you have some information: where are postal drops located? And no citizens,
and no one in this room is like: I want to know where all the postal drops in America
are. They want to know where the postal drop right next to them is. So think through the
use cases of how would someone use this, and if itís a very large dataset,
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but you know that someone wants whatís very small and relevant to them, then itís usually
a good indicator that itís an API
Is there a resource that lists all the agencies with APIs?
Weíre getting very close to that. The closest thing to that right now, if you go to developer.data.gov,
thereís a web services link and in that youíll see a partial list, we actually have a larger
list at GSAís github account. So if you go to: github.com/gsa youíll see a project called
Slash Developerpages. What youíll see is, this pretty much right here, these are all
the agencies and units that have, not just put out APIs, but have actually built a developer
home for their APIs. So this is the gold standard weíre shooting for everyone. Also, if anyone
is interested in this list, I would love to talk to your agency about getting on this
list. Iím building now a loose APIs list as well. Thatís like a lot of deep googling
that has found about all you can find without breaking into buildings.