As San Francisco and Washington D.C. prepare to launch their new APIs we’d like to have other cities and managers of 311 services show their support for implementing an interoperable standard for these APIs. The more cities get behind this effort, the better for developers, for city budgets, and for citizens. Showing a critical mass of support for using this standard will help encourage developers, other cities, and existing 311 services to become more invested in the potential of an interoperable system.
A standard means that people can use their favorite app in every city and developers can focus on new features rather than different requirements for each city. Everyone can then benefit from new innovations built from a common foundation. Additionally, interoperability is helpful not only to simplify the offering of citizen interfaces, but also to help unify and better facilitate inter-agency coordination for city managers.
To date, the people who have joined San Francisco and Washington D.C. by showing their support for implementing a standard API include directors of these services and CIO or CTOs in cities like Boston, Portland, Edmonton, Seattle, and Los Angeles as well as those from services like SeeClickFix and Ushahidi.
Please take the pledge and show your support.