The Government Digital Service (GDS) has highlighted a number of ‘pain points’ in the use of application programme interfaces in central government.
It has run a discovery project as part of the move to boost the use of APIs to strengthen secure data sharing between government bodies, and to support the ambitions laid out in the Blueprint for modern digital government. This includes a push in the development of APIs and a requirement for all central government bodies to publish details of those they use.
The discovery was run over eight weeks with digital technology consultancy Scrumconnect to assess the matures and appetite for using APIs across departments and arm’s length bodies.
This identified a handful of pain points in API readiness and maturity, which varies significantly but is generally quite low, and for which there are pockets of high quality work that sometimes lack wider support and resources.
Some organisations are relatively mature with established ‘API first’ approaches, while others are still reliant on legacy systems and manual processes, while some departments have well defined APIs but limited documentation and have been inconsistent in adopting standards.
In addition, there are concerns around the relevant security and governance, especially in departments with sensitive data.
Data sharing problems
In relation to data sharing, GDS said the discovery found that there is still widespread use of manual processes, that it is often held back by requirements such as memorandum of understanding or data protection impact assessment, and there are problems with discoverability.
The latter is caused by data catalogues still being under development or fragmented, which makes it difficult to know what data exists, who owns it and how to access it.
On a more positive note, GDS reported that the number of attendees in API community meetings increased from two or three to 30 or more over last year, and that it has produced a proposal to help departments obtain help in designing, building and running APIs.
Its senior data and security architect, James Freeland, said: “There’s exciting work to do in this space, with the Government Digital Service helping organisations across the public sector to share data more securely and effectively.”
