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Rapid implementation of policy as code
on May 12, 2020
No policy or rule stays the same forever. In response to a crisis, policy changes often come much faster, and stakes can be higher.
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What is an API?
on April 22, 2016
An API is like a grocery store, helping you get bananas without having to plant a banana tree.
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New U.S. Digital Registry authenticates official public service accounts
on February 1, 2016
We’d like to introduce to you a new API-generating repository for official third-party sites, social media platforms, and mobile apps in the United States federal government that can help you do that and remove bureaucratic and technological barriers between users and digital public services.
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Behind the scenes: Building a new College Scorecard with students
on September 14, 2015
How we worked with the Department of Education on new steps to help students, parents and advisers make better college choices, including a new College Scorecard, comprehensive and updated data on higher education institutions, and customized tools using this new data.
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67 million more Federal Election Commission records at your fingertips
on July 15, 2015
The OpenFEC API added a filings endpoint as well as itemized receipt and disbursement data. This is the first major update to the API: The records we’re adding today are the meat and potatoes of campaign finance. You can see in detail where a campaign’s money comes from and where they spend their money.
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The dat team talks data Streams
on April 23, 2015
Max Ogden and Mathias Buus Madsen are visiting 18F today to talk about dat, an open source project for versioning and sharing datasets. This new piece of software is part of their effort to build “automated, reproducible data pipelines that sync.
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Going to .Gov college
on December 15, 2014
Last week, a number of teammates coordinated to put on three DigitalGov University courses that covered a range of topics, from culture change and open source to the latest in API trends.
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The encasement strategy: on legacy systems and the importance of APIs
on September 8, 2014
In 1986 a nuclear reactor known as Chernobyl released harmful radioactivity which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. The core of this reactor remains a glowing, ineradicable mass of deadly radioactive lava in the middle of a large Exclusion Zone unfit for human habitation.
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Take a gander at our /Developer page
on July 23, 2014
A growing trend both inside government and outside is to have a simple welcoming page for outside developers who may be interested in your team’s efforts. This material is often located at website.gov/developer and points visitors to technical material that developers may be interested in, especially APIs. Collecting technical documentation in one place facilitates the developer experience, ensuring that they can find and begin using APIs with as little friction as possible.
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Hot off the press: 18F's API standards
on July 15, 2014
We recently released the first version of our API Standards — a set of recommendations and guidelines for API production. It is our intention that every 18F API meet these standards, to help us ensure a baseline quality and consistency across all APIs we offer now and in the future.
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Intro to APIs: Working with URLs, JSON, APIs, and Open Data — without writing any code
on June 25, 2014
June 27, 2014, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Register now. GSA’s digital teams are offering a user-friendly intro course to APIs. Regardless of your skill level, you will walk away from this lesson understanding what APIs are and how developers use them.
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Announcing the /Developer Program: a new hub for federal API creators
on May 29, 2014
We recently launched our /Developer Program (pronounced "slash developer") to help federal agencies develop useful, robust APIs. The Program is a collection of educational resources, opportunities to engage the community for help and feedback, and tools that can help you build APIs — essentially an ever-growing knowledge base curated by 18F.
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Packaging up API usability testing for agency reuse
on May 19, 2014
Over the past year, a GSA collaboration has seen a project that offers API usability testing to federal agencies go from the pilot stage to a regular, robust series. Already, 13 agencies and programs have participated, and several more participate with every monthly session that passes. The best examples from across the government have made clear that one of the most important tasks of API producers is to regularly engage their developer community and listen to what they have to say. But just encouraging agencies to do this only goes so far.
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Slides from the inaugural 18F Demo Day
on May 16, 2014
The presentations given at the inaugural 18F Demo Day on May 9, 2014 are online and available at Speaker Deck. If you would like more information on any topic, please feel free to contact the individual speaker.
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With FBOpen API, 18F shows what's possible in government
on May 11, 2014
There has been some great coverage of the new group of tech specialists out of the GSA, dubbed 18F.
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Make government APIs better with user experience
on May 10, 2014
An API is a product just like a car, a website or a ballpoint pen. It’s designed to help someone do something. Products are either designed well—they meet expectations and deliver value—or they are designed poorly and create frustration and confusion. Inevitably, bad products are abandoned without a thought, like an old T-shirt with holes in it.
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How a pepperoni pizza inspires open government
on April 12, 2014
Easy access to detailed tracking of processes has become more and more popular. Whether using Amazon.com, UPS, Uber or United Airlines, people expect instant feedback. They want to immediately see the status of a process upon which they depend.
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Open source and terms of service = a better developer experience
on April 11, 2014
One of the important changes occurring across the federal government is the role of open source for non-code projects - using an open, iterative model of collaboration inherited from the coding community for all kinds of new purposes. Want to see a great example of this in action? In recent years, as more and more agencies offer public APIs, some have included a developer terms of service (TOS).
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Announcing FBOpen: Government opportunities made easier
on March 31, 2014
Today we're announcing our first product launch: FBOpen, a set of open-source tools to help small businesses search for opportunities to work with the U.S. government.
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