What public APIs are provided by Governments to the public?

Question

Suddenly I feel proud to be a British Citizen... are you ready? Good:

HMRC (the lovely people who take our tax off us) provide a fully documented API, see here, for filling in just about every form they have. Not only that, but they define a whole set of schemas and everything available here: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards.aspx

All I can say is my estimation of the UK gov't went up when I disccovered that.

Unfortunately that's as far as it goes, but still, an API for interacting with the HMRC is very, very useful.

We also have data.gov.uk where an entire archive of government data is made available; I believe there are APIs for accessing it too.

Edit: I have just stumbled across another UK data source/API:

Ordnance Survey Mapping Data (openspace). Some things have already been done with openspace I believe; still, free access to OS's maps to manipulate how you will is very, very good. Ordnance Survey maps of the UK are very high quality and come in varying levels of accuracy and for different purposes (for those who haven't lived/travelled in the UK).

Edit 2: Look at this! The World Government Data Store API from the guardian. A newspaper, writing an API...! I'm in shock. Sticking to UK themed APIs, here's the API directory of the UK from programmableweb.

France

Germany

United Kingdom

United States of America

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I started compiling an answer with a list of APIs per countries, but I realized I wouldn't have the time so here's already a few pointers.

API Directories

• At ProgrammableWeb:
  • Governments Mashups and APIs
  • Government Tag
  • Search for 'Government'

Looking for APIs Online

• e-Government APIs on Google Scholar
• "REST API" Google searches for:
  • .govt.nz
  • .gouv.fr

Public API Efforts

• Open Government Data Initiative

Similar StackOverflow Questions

• US Governments APIs

I am making this answer a community wiki so others can contribute directly. I think this is a very good question and it deserves a very comprehensive answer and that we consolidate this stuff in one area.

US Government Web Services and XML Data Sources

I live in NZ and there are quite a few useful public government webservices available:

InfoConnect Highway Info - Supplies traffic count information, traffic web-cams, highway location referencing etc

Broadband Map - Public webservice that allows one to get a feel for the overall coverage of various broadband services in NZ

GeoNet - Earthquake, tsunami data (which is quite relevant as we just had a massive earthquake today)

Hope that helps ya in some way!

Found some more from ProgrammableWeb:

Australian Business Number Lookup

OpenSecrets.org - U.S. Political Data Lookup API

European Open Patent Services API

UK police force mapping service

United Nations Information Service

World Government Data