Top 13 Examples & 5 Use Cases of Governmental APIs in 2024

Governments have an enormous amount of valuable data such as college enrollment, consumer complaints, and demographic data. In many cases, they provide access to them using APIs. This information can be used by analysts and developers in different fields to gather and analyze information or develop their own custom APIs. 

In this article, we will explore the top 5 use cases of governmental APIs that analysts and developers can benefit from. 

1- Education 

Each year countless education-related information is published. However, they can be scattered on different governmental websites and data portals such as the National center for education statistics and the US department of education websites. This fragmentation makes it hard to see the overall picture. APIs can collect data easily and quickly from these different sources. 

Examples of Information that can be collected using APIs are :

• Enrollment data in colleges and pre-college education level,
• Financing data,
• Behavioral information such as absenteeism and bullying,
• The detailed number of school-age children in poverty.

The following is a list of 3 education-related governmental APIs:

 1- Civil Rights Data Collection APIs

This API provides information about:

• Advanced placement courses,
• SAT & ACT participation,
• Harassment & bullying. 

2- College scorecard API

The following data can be collected using this API:

• College costs,
• Completion,
• Earnings. 

 3- Urban institute education API

This API provides access to many different education data from different sources in one API. The information accessed using this API is :

• Federal student aid,
• Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools,
• Income and poverty level of states and counties. 

2- Regulation 

There are many different regulations and laws passed and amended each year. Keeping track of regulation is crucial as it can have meaningful implications for businesses. The following governmental APIs are examples of APIs that can be used for keeping track of regulations and agency decisions. 

4- Regulation.gov.api

This API enables : 

• Searching & retrieving details for documents,
• Searching & retrieving details for comments,
• Searching & retrieving details for dockets.

5- HSR Early Termination Notices API

Certain large merger & acquisition deals are required to file a premerger notification and wait for government review. The deal can not close until the government outlined time period passes or the government issues an early termination of the waiting period. This API provided by FTC enables retrieving information and updates regarding all early termination notices. 

6- Do Not Call (DNC) Reported Calls Data API

Information about robocalls and do not call complaints that have been submitted to FTC can be tracked and retrieved using this API. 

3- Trade & commerce 

Trade & commerce related APIs can be used to collect economic and trade-related data such as:

• Tariff rates.
• Value added tax(VAT) rate based on product.

Examples of trade & commerce APIs provided by government entities are: 

7- BEA data API

This API is provided by the US department of commerce. Information such as the following can be collected from this API:

• GDP contribution by industry.
• International transaction indicators.
• International investment position.

8- De minimis API

Information regarding de minimis and VAT that a product might face after being exported to a different county can be collected using this API. 

9- FTA tariff rates API

Tariff rates on different products for countries which the US has a free trade agreement(FTA) can be retrieved using this API. 

4- Healthcare 

Governmental healthcare API can be used to collect information regarding:

• Food,
• Drugs,
• Healthcare & medical devices,
• Health information.

Additionally, internal data points can be combined with external sources to create a new internal API. However, since healthcare data are sensitive, the API must be tested from different perspectives, such as security and functionality. 

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Examples of governmental healthcare API are : 

10- FDA APIs

US food & drug administration (FDA) provides various APIs that can be used to collect information about:

• Food API that can retrieve information about recalled food and adverse events.
• Drug API can be used to collect data about adverse effects, product labeling, and recalled drugs. 
• Device API can be used to collect information about device classification, pre-market approval, and recalls. 

11- Department of health & human services API

This API enables the retrieval of health-related information that can be used by other developers to show in their websites and applications.

If you are interested in learning more about use cases of APIs in the healthcare sector read Healthcare APIs:7 Use cases, 7 Case studies & 3 Challenges.

5- Energy 

These APIs provide information gathered from sources like the US department of energy. 

Examples of governmental energy APIs are:

12- Petroleum & other liquids data and statistics API

This API provides time-series data & statistics on different energy sources such as :

• Oil,
• Gas,
• Coal 

13- Electricity data consumption API

Information such as the following can be retrieved from this API:

• Consumption-based on fuel type used for generation
• Consumption-based on sector

If you are interested in reading more about API use cases in the energy sector, read Top 4 Use Cases & 2 Case Studies of API in the Energy Sector.

If you are trying to use governmental API in your organization, you can reach us: