Idea: Pass an ordinance/law that requires City departments to deliver information through a standard API.

[Bytemarks]

Discussion for: Pass an ordinance/law that requires City departments to deliver information through a standard API.

[Patrick Kelly]

As I recall, the suggestion was that any information published online must also be available via an API.  My worry is that mandating that published information also be available via API would create a disincentive to publishing information.  It becomes: Nothing can be published online unless it is also available via an API.

How could such a law/ordinance be formed such that it encourages API creation without discouraging publishing of information? 

[J Clark]

Good idea, but casting today's specific standards into law may be a problem in the future as new standards arise. This is the "code becomes law" problem.

Can you can require the information be in a standard that "has wide use" (as defined by...), pose this requirement as a movable but well established target? Something like XML. How would you describe that 1) as a current standard, and 2) as future-facing?

  judi

[Peter Kay]

Valid concerns on "code becomes law" problem.  However the fact is if there is not a law, it simply won't happen.  One vendor told me that he always put API features as options on his proposals and due to the higher cost, they were always nixed.  I'm certain we could write the law in a general enough format that allows it to morph over time. 

Worst case, the law gets amended by future generations, just like today's laws have been.

Patrick there is definitely a concern that this will disincentivize publishing;  but if you think about it, if there's not an api to consume the data, it's really not  being published anyway.  If a city website can't go up unless its built from an API, public pressure for the data will eventually overcome resistance to publishing. 

The benefits to an API requirement are so massive that it must be a fundamental requirement of sites, just like ADA requirements are in parking lots and stairways. 

[Peter Kay]

I just made a bunch of edits on the wiki.  Let's get this party started. 

[Forest Frizzell]

Check out this article on San Francisco's hackathon that they just had
a last weekend. The 4th paragraph mentions a senator introducing
legislation next month to require public documents and data to be
available electronically in a searchable, structured format so that
keywords or names can be found more easily. Maybe we can reach out to
them for some of the language.

http://www.govtech.com/e-government/SF-Hackathon-Produces-Legislative-Alert-App-Prototype.html

[Bytemarks]

Here is more information about what they are doing in San Francisco.

http://www.wiredtoshare.com/structured_open_data_campaign

Their Open Data law has language we may be able to use, as it pertains to Honolulu.

http://www.sfbos.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/bag110910_101155.pdf

[808blogger]

It could be more basic than that. Just require at minimal it be published via html, (for example: http://www4.honolulu.gov/hpdtraffic/    I just made my own api for it and then i can do this http://kokuatraffic.com/).

The point is as long as the data is on the web in html someone in the private sector can create and maintain an API. 

The data just needs to be out there, there are plenty of smart people around. 

[Ryan Ozawa]

I've previously requested access to that traffic incident/dispatch information. If it can be published via HTML, it can be published via XML, without needing to scrape or parse a web page. I'm also after the crime data that they're now sending to CrimeMapping.com... after they told media for years that the information simply wasn't available in any usable format. Now that they'e got some kind of feed set up for that private company, they should easily be able to make it available to the public.

Ryan

[Peter Kay]

The draft policy affects existing and future web content to start with, so whether it's HTML or XML, it's safe to say that step has already been completed by the fact that the website is live. 

That being said, we can't stop there because for many applications, it simply won't work.  The live traffic/incident data is a tiny dataset and so either a scrape or xml parse works well.  But when you consider, for example, real estate and property tax data,  you simply can't screen scrape when you need to pull the data.   Setting a policy of requiring all public city websites use an api to display their own data, publish the api, and then for bonus points open source their website code is the cleanest way to go.  Then the smart folks can build richer datasets on top of that and know that the data will have the highest possible degree of integrity.  

[Aryn]

I wonder how much the grant would be to digitize the city documents  would be ;) 

[Peter Kay]

I had a morning coffee the other day with Ken Schmidt who drives a lot
of the automation within the Dept. of Planning and Permitting. I've
known Ken for > 10 years and he's a clear, innovative thinker. His
dept is already developing APIs for public consumption so he's ahead
of the curve.

After our discussion, I came away convinced that while having an
ordinance has the most power, we can get the ball rolling faster and
easier by first getting a "Mayors Directive" which will have quite a
bit of influence in the organization. We can then see how that goes,
make some adjustments, and then get an Council Resolution passed.
After further refinements and buy-in, we can finally get an ordinance
passed. There's also a good chance that we may not even need an
ordinance if the Directive and/or Resolution works.

So instead of getting all political with Councilmembers, etc, we can
quickly move forward with a Mayor's directive and then keep refining
as we go.

I spoke to Forrest and Gordon yesterday at Hackathon and they both
thought this was a better way to go. Forrest mentioned he would help
pickup this ball after the current events pass over. We may run into
some issues with this as an election year as well ( my comments, not
Forrest's) so lets keep that in mind.

I'd rather see incremental movement happen sooner instead of
significant movement later. Given that we're all quite busy and don't
have the time for the full court press that will be required to pass
an ordinance, I would like to see us work w/ Forrest and Gordon to
start with a Mayor's Directive asap.

Thoughts?

[kevin curry]

Planning & Permitting API would be awesome. 

What do you want to achieve? That will determine whether a directive or an ordinance is the right approach. To whom do city employees report? Does the City Manager have to buy in, too?

Here's a model directive:

http://opengovernmentinitiative.org/directive/v1/

There's talk & hope of publishing model ordinances, legislation, and contract templates there, too.

--
Kevin Curry
Virginia Beach, VA
http://twitter.com/kmcurry

[Peter Kay]

We want to achieve what we've already stated in the various drafts for an ordinance and ultimately the ordinance is the way to go.  Mayors directives and resolutions are not mutually exclusive and gives us the opportunity to get traction sooner rather than later.

[kevin curry]

Like putting down a marker via the official public record on your way to an ordinance. Makes sense. Such a directive should be interpreted a strong indicator that the city is moving in a certain direction and that offices & employees should begin moving in that direction. It also provides support and justification to current, ongoing activities. Do I have it right?

Thanks for entertaining my questions. Always trying to learn.

[Peter Kay]

That's my view, yes.  The internal folks, I believe, just want to get this done in the easiest way possible. So I think both from external and internal perspective this works.  Thanks for the good probes!

[Ryan Ozawa]

While it being an election year complicates things, we could also see an opportunity. Advocacy groups often poll candidates on their issue to say, "X, Y, and Z support open data initiatives." Maybe we can even float a basic "pledge"? Have all candidates aboard, and worry less come November.

Ryan

Sent from my iPhone

[Burt Lum]

Ryan,
That is a great idea. Open data is an initiative that is not only
embraced by our City administration but also across the country. The
mayoral candidates are making this sound like a one issue election. We
should hear what they say about the other issues.

Burt

[kevin curry]

Pledge: http://opengovernmentinitiative.org/candidate-open-government-pledge/

[Peter Kay]

Hmm..interesting. Might be good to get some input from the internal side on this.  I can see it being good or maybe not.  Good because we can get support for it and then hold the elected mayor to it later.  Not good because if it becomes a political issue, it gets frozen in its tracks or worse, it's not embraced by the mayor that wins.

I'd have to give this some additional consideration and get feedback before coming out for or against the idea.

Peter Kay

[kevin curry]

I originally included a commentary in my reply but took it out at the last minute. I also wonder about pledges. 

This one is fairly innocuous, though. The intention is to provide straightforward language any candidate can adopt if they are so inclined to include open gov in their platform.

I'll add that I've been reading through these and I think they should be updated. By all means, iterate.

[kevin curry]

A mayor who would not embrace the pledge would not sign the pledge.

[Peter Kay]

Correct. And if he gets elected, you can be sure he won't sign a mayor's directive.  that's my point.  we may risking more than its worth by meshing this with the electionl. 

[Peter Kay]

Perfect that the winner of Hackathon was based on TheBus API. In
other words: this app could not be written without an API to call.
This makes a fantastic case for what we want and we should leverage
that.

[Kory P]

thanks everyone for the continued efforts with this.  It sounds like the approach with the mayor is the way to go.  Awesome.  To me it still sounds like we still need to hone in on amending language in S 52 since there's already language stating that data has to be made available. It's my understanding that we just need to go in and add/swap/delete language in that law using language we come up with from other places, etc