Joint Research CentreThe European Commission’s science and knowledge service

APIs4DGov studyGovernment API strategies Workshop

17th – 18th October 2018

Lorenzino Vaccari, Monica Posada, Dimitris Mavridis and

Robin S. SmithJRC.B6, Digital Economy unit

The JRC and B6 Digital Economy Unit

• The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission's science and knowledge service carrying out research to provide independent scientific advice and support to EU policies

• The JRC B6 Digital Economy Unit• Investigating how the on-going digital revolution

and Information and Communications Technologies are affecting the economy and the digital transformation of Governments

APIs4DGov study“Digital Government APIs. The road to value-added Open API-driven services” [10]

The study fossing on Web governmental API has started in January 2018 and lasts for two years. It will contribute to:

• The EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 [5], in particular its open government approach to modernise public administration

• The implementation of the European Interoperability Framework (e.g. actions of the focus area 4: “Develop, maintain and promote key interoperability enablers”) [11]

• The implementation of the Once Only Principle [7]

• The Building Block approach adopted in the Connecting European Facilities (CEF) programme [6]

Context: Aims of the revised PSI Directive

In respect of the continued existence to overcome barriers to the reuse of the PSI, among others, the revision* proposes to:

• Increase the availability of data by bringing new types of public and publicly funded data into the scope of the Directive, such as data held by public undertakings in the utilities and transport sectors and research data resulting from public funding

• Increase business opportunities by encouraging the dissemination of dynamic data via application programming interfaces (APIs)

*The proposal is now being discussed with the European Parliament and the Council.

APIs4DGovstudy

APIState of play

• Assess digital government APIs landscape, opportunities, current trends and horizons

APIAdded value

• Identify the key enablers, drivers, barriers, potential risks and mitigates

• Identify socio-economic impacts of data sharing, data-driven government services and APIs

APIFramework proposal

• Identify relevant ICT standards and specifications, select best practicesand develop recommendations

• Provide a set of policy recommendations and propose domains and thematic areas to focus on

1. Why governments should invest resources in setting up an API ecosystem?

2. Which government actions should be taken in developing government APIs?

Photo by Damian Patkowski on UnsplashState of play

State of Play: Multiple-case studies analysis

Denmark’s Addressers Web API (DAWA): A unique access point for the addresses in Denmark

Amsterdam city data: a single portal providing developers with a ReST API

Flanders Underground - Cable and Pipe Information Portal (KLIP): was created in 2007 following a gas explosion in 2004 caused loss of life.

Madrid MobilityLabs: an open and interoperable API based platform

Future Internetware(FIWARE): is an open platform which can be harnessed by developers to create and deliver smart, data-driven solutions, applications and services.

Estonia X-Road: is an API driven data exchange ecosystem platform that was initially developed between 1998 and 2001

Italian Digital Transformation Team: building a specific API project

Main findings

• API successfully used to share data both internally and externally

• Case studies show strong returns in terms of internal reorganization and unexpected external apps development and (economic) growth

• Because of the extreme evolution of the sector, a quick and fast delivery is considered better than extensive plan

• Lightweight standard(s) is/are required

Denmark Addresses Web API: ~1.5bn requests in 2017

Madrid Mobility Labs API: ~480m requests per year

Amsterdam City Data API: ~350m requests per year

Flanders Underground - Cable and Pipe Information Portal API:

~120m requests per year

When implemented, API usage is huge!

API successfully used to share data both internally and externally

Case studies show strong returns in terms of internal reorganization and unexpected external apps development and (economic) growth

APIs4DGov study

recent case studies

The list of identified EU government APIs

The list comes from different resources including:

• ProgrammableWebAPI directory

• Previous studies made by the European Commission

API registries

Programmable Web It's the most complete list of Private and Public APIs

https://www.programmableweb.com/category/all/apis ~20000

Mashape & Rapid API Private and Public APIs registry as a Marketplace

https://market.mashape.com/explorehttps://rapidapi.com/ ~8000

APIHarmony (IBM, experimental)

API Harmony currently lists APIs. Data stems from APIs.guru, from crawling the web, and from user-provided input

https://apiharmony-open.mybluemix.net/public 1179

APIs.io (Experimental)Experimental API Search service to help discover APIs on the web. The service uses the APIs.json proposed discovery format

http://apis.io/ 1143

APIsGuru (seems old) API tooling to help developers work with GraphQL and OpenAPI/Swagger https://apis.guru/browse-apis/ ~300

ProgrammableWeb directory

Mashape/RapidAPI marketplace

A public API registry (France) [9]

Source:

References

[1] http://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/

[2] http://www.geoportal.org/

[3] https://www.europeandataportal.eu

[4] https://www.plan4all.eu/api/

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/communication-eu-egovernment-action-plan-2016-2020-accelerating-digital-transformation

[6] https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/About+CEF+building+blocks

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-wide-digital-once-only-principle-citizens-and-businesses-policy-options-and-their-impacts

[8] https://github.com/opengeospatial/WFS_FES

[9] https://api.gouv.fr/apis

[10] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/new-study-digital-government-apis-apis4dgov-project

[11] https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en

[12] http://api.geodab.eu/dab/api-rest-docs/

[13] https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/APIs4DGov-INSPIRE

[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvoHAUbo1tg

[15] https://www.plan4all.eu/inspire-hackathon-2018/

[16] http://inspire-sandbox.jrc.ec.europa.eu/etf-webapp/swagger-ui.html

[17] https://goo.gl/iyokJv

[18] https://sensorup.com/iot/comparison-of-sensorthings-api-and-sensor-observation-service/

[19] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ministerial-declaration-egovernment-tallinn-declaration

Thanks!For more info: jrc-apis4dgov@ec.europa.eu