Civic APIs

As governments continue to adopt open data policies, more and more data will be made available to civic hackers. The data alone, however, isn’t much use to a would-be civic hacker, who is used to the consumer web’s APIs and developer ecosystems. This summer, a number of Code for America interns, supported by Google Summer of Code, worked to help governments catch up. They built developer tools for major public datasets, including the FCC and EPA, which make it easy for a developer to go from an idea for a civic app to execution. Plus, they build apps using these tools to showcase their value, including MadeWithData.com. Over the past few months, Code for America has contributed more than 60 new developer tools in various languages — more than doubling the number of tools available to civic hackers.