Turbo-charging application programming interfaces (API) connectivity across government enables seamless, secure, legal and trusted data sharing. This will help address issues with underutilisation of data that were identified in the state of digital government review, and will help to deliver the six point plan for digital reform across the UK government laid out in the blueprint for modern digital government.
In January 2024 James Freeland, Senior Data and Security Architect and Alex Smith, Head of Data Security and Platforms at the Government Digital Service (GDS), teamed up to work on the API programme. They set themselves some goals for the end of the year:
- To achieve increased membership of the API community
- Improve API engagement with government departments and Arm's Length Bodies (ALBs)
- Improve API standards and interoperability across government departments
- To assess API readiness and maturity across government.
Their intention was to use these engagement activities as a spring board to improve API connectivity and uptake across departments.
They worked with their delivery partners, Scrumconnect, to conduct an eight week discovery with the main objective of this work being to assess maturity and appetite for using APIs in the sharing of data across departments and ALBs.
Undertaking cross government API research
The Scrumconnect discovery team undertook four key phases of activities:
- Conducting structured user research interviews with participants at departments
- Sending out an API survey questionnaire to departments who participated in user research interviews
- Designing an API maturity model; defining what makes a good API
- Presenting the findings and report to key stakeholders
The research findings
At the end of the eight week discovery, their main findings revealed some common pain points:
API readiness and maturity:
- Varies significantly across government departments but is generally quite low
- Small pockets of excellent work is going on, led by dedicated individuals, but they sometimes lack wider support and resources
- Some organisations are more mature with established API-first approaches, while others are still reliant on legacy systems and manual processes
- Some departments have well defined APIs, but limited documentation and inconsistent adoption of standards
- Security and governance around APIs were common concerns, especially in departments with sensitive data
API in relation to data sharing:
- Manual processes: these are still widely used for sharing data, slowing down processes and causing versioning headaches
- Governance and compliance: approval processes and legal constraints such as a Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) and Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIAs) are key barriers to faster data sharing, with multiple levels of approval required before data can be accessed or shared
- Discoverability: data catalogues are still in development or fragmented, making it difficult for teams to know what data exists, who owns it and how to access it
Key outcomes
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.
A set of measurable outcomes were achieved as a result of commissioning the API Discovery work:
- Significant growth in API community members from just 2 or 3 regular attendees (between January - September 2024) to 30 or more attendees in October
- A proposal to help departments get help designing, building and running APIs
Get involved!
James and Alex are looking for colleagues to help move this work forward by participating in upcoming alpha user research. To get involved in this and to join the API community contact them at: api-programme@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
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