Transparency
How might we help Taiwan unlock its creative potential through digital innovation?
We believe public digital platforms should automatically provide reliable data collected in transparent means and make it accessible to people.
The adoption of common API standards in information services
International government information are moving towards open standards and common platforms (such as the UK, Italy, Bulgaria, Australia, etc.) to facilitate greater efficiency on cross-service orchestration.
Services with a common API, implementing the four criteria of “machine-readable, open format, discoverable index, machine-writable”, can bring the following benefits:
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Utilize a common standard format to save time and money for subsequent migration, such as visualization, aggregation and cross-departmental access;
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When one needs to add functionality, new service providers can build extensions based on the existing data schema;
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Agencies can provide new front-end services quickly and easily as needed, without risking changing the back-end code;
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Users enjoy a more consistent experience on government information services. For example, queries that have been made on several Web sites in the past and can be integrated into one interface.
All these benefits ultimately works to help build trust between the government and citizens.
##Guiding Policy
Following the “Digital Nation" 8-year program, we have implemented these measures:
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Translated the OAS3 specification from Linux Foundation into a National Development Council standard document.
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Published the national open data platform’s own machine-to-machine RESTful interface as apis.json index.
##Validation mechanism
Following automated validation of accessibility A+ standards, we encourage agencies to use automated acceptance-test OAS toolkits to validate APIs.
##Promotion mechanism
The National Development Council periodically convenes joint IT leadership meetings on national and local levels. We held an “OAS Town Hall” and published the full transcript online.
Before ratification, we also sought advice with local experts, as well with Rufus Pollock from the Open Knowledge foundation (initial meeting, follow-up meeting).
##Procurement support
We have included two key Linux Foundation standards, the OAS3 specification as well as open source license manifest (including but not limited to SPDX) into the procurement template for digital services.
We are also amending "Regulations for Selection and Fee Calculation of Technical Services Providers Entrusted by Entities " to legally authorize all IT departments to ask vendors for conformance to OAS at little or zero additional cost.