As you may already have heard, our mission at Govt.nz is to help the public interact more easily with government.
This isn’t limited only to the pages of Govt.nz, though — it’s also about sharing data and datasets. Anyone can use this data to build useful apps, informative visualisations, or anything else they want.
Our primary way of sharing data is through our API.
Built during Govt.nz’s initial development, we know it has some rough edges. Now, we’re looking at how to help it be the best API it can be.
We’ve had some great feedback and suggestions so far. It’s included increasing the default number of records a query can return, and including more information about individual Ministers and their terms in office.
We want to know more, though, and we’re hoping you can help us.
Some of the questions we have include:
- What data should the API have?
- How do you think it should work?
- What would make it useful for you?
- Are there any particular output formats you prefer?
- Where do you think it could be used?
- Have you/your organisation already been using the API and if so, how?
One of the things we’ve been mulling over is whether the API should access all Govt.nz content. At the moment, it only accesses the contact details in the site’s government directory. What do you think?
We’re not opposed to a major revamp of the API, so please don’t hold back.
