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Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

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Re: Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

#11

Post by ALee »

jcarbaugh wrote: post #5

This isn't quite getEveryDollarSpent, but check out http://usaspending.gov/ . The site tracks all federal contracting dollars spent. It has an API and a fairly detailed set of data. Rather than one giant government API, we will probably see each agency slowly create more meaningful ways to get at their data. I expect there to be some exciting open data initiatives from the Obama administration.

jcarbaugh won't say this, but the Sunlight Foundation to which he works for is pretty much pushing the government to adopt API standards. They were the folks who were partially responsible for this great link among other amazing products.

Re: Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

#14

Post by lacker »

How about letting me give the government my email, and then they could email me instead of snail mail, or let me see government correspondence with me online.

A friend of mine got a traffic ticket that he paid incorrectly, and had a wrong address on file. A year later he got arrested during a random broken-taillight stop with a ridiculous amount of late fees. He asked if he had any other tickets outstanding, and they said they couldn't tell him - there was no system for lookups like that. He could only make sure he had the right address on file and wait for further mail. That's a pretty ridiculous system.

Re: Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

#15

Post by pavel_lishin »

lacker wrote: post #14

How about letting me give the government my email, and then they could email me instead of snail mail, or let me see government correspondence with me online. A friend of mine got a traffic ticket that he paid incorrectly, and had a wrong address on file. A year later he got arrested during a random broken-taillight stop with a ridiculous amount of late fees. He asked if he had any other tickets outstanding, and they…

I don't know about e-mail - I've been locked out of several accounts, and have had a few scary false-positives with my spam filter.

On the other hand, I doubt any spam is going to come from a .gov domain...

Re: Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

#16

Post by xenophanes »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15
lacker wrote: post #14

How about letting me give the government my email, and then they could email me instead of snail mail, or let me see government correspondence with me online. A friend of mine got a traffic ticket that he paid incorrectly, and had a wrong address on file. A year later he got arrested during a random broken-taillight stop with a ridiculous amount of late fees. He asked if he had any other tickets outstanding, and they…

I don't know about e-mail - I've been locked out of several accounts, and have had a few scary false-positives with my spam filter. On the other hand, I doubt any spam is going to come from a .gov domain...

Email in addition to what we have now would only help, even if 30% of the emails sent weren't received.

Re: Ask HN: What Would you want in a government API?

#18

Post by smhinsey »

I would like to see a "profile" style portal which can be linked to any relevant Federal programs I am involved with, from Social Security to my tax burdens with the IRS.

Primarily I would like this to be a single-service type situation where I can choose to go paperless and conduct all correspondence electronically (if I still need to send in the occasional signature such as you do when you e-file your tax returns, so be it). I'd like to see timeline or email based metaphor for interacting with this correspondence. It should include IRS, passport, immigration, the entitlement programs, the VA, whatever your interactions with the fed cover, it should cover.

There is no reason this couldn't share authentication with my state & municipal governments as well. I would like to see a seamless portal for interaction with government at all levels, while each level retains their own autonomy of implementation. If this is 10 years out on the timeline, that is fine, but I do want to see progress made. Start small if you must, but start.

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