An effective API can offer the public new ways to use and interact with government records and services. Take, for example, the restaurant inspection scores of a local government health department. In the past, the utility of such scores may have been limited by the lack of engaging means to publicize them. Now, by making such scores publicly available on the web and easily accessible through a well-designed API, the local health department can leverage the ingenuity of outside developers to disseminate and find new uses for the restaurant scores through new applications. Developers create apps that list local dining spots based on various user-selected criteria, including health scores. Healthcare organizations create apps that use the scores, combined with dietary and nutritional information, to recommend healthier eating options for its subscribers. And the health department itself creates an app that makes it easy for the public to find the health score of any restaurant within its jurisdiction. In these and other ways, the health department has vastly expanded the public utility and reach of its restaurant health score records – all simply by making the data accessible through an API.
