Local Governments

==Is anyone out there using this data? If not, want to?==
http://www.business.gov/about/features/api/geodata/
===My simple idea, a geographically sortable list of local government home pages based on:===
1. Geographic hierarchy
2. On a Google map
3. By latest time updated - send a robot in each day looking for
changes on the home page
4. By latest time updated - a sort option within the geographic hierarchy
5. By population ranges
6. Display most/least updated by major population ranges - Help
identify the most or least active websites in a comparative fashion
7. Display on a map the cities, towns, and townships with no known web
site - then use http://TransparencyCorps.org to crowd source attempts
to find the missing sites/pages
Also, any idea if the API is built on the data collected by the US
Census of Governments in 2007:
http://harvester.census.gov/gid/gid_07/options.html
This relates to #7 - when I dug into the 2007 Censis data I found that
MOST local governments do not actually have websites - why? There are
thousands of rural townships and towns with no web sites. I also found
thousands without their own URL and instead a few web pages on some
static local tourism web site with nothing more than basic directory
information. While I would guess 90% of the population is served with
a local government website, this is an untold story (until now).
Steve
From:
http://www.business.gov/about/features/api/geodata/
U.S. City and County Web Data API
Description
This geographic names data set provides a "mashup" of URLs for
official city and county government web sites and city and county
location data from the USGS Geographic Names Information System
(GNIS). GNIS data includes incorporated places, census designated
areas, unincorporated places, counties, and populated places.
The base URL for all calls to the Loans & Grants Search API is
http://api.business.gov/geodata/.
The API is RESTful and output formats are available in XML and JSON.
Methods
 * City/County Data - All URLs
 If a city or county government has more than one domain or URL,
one URL has been tagged as the primary city or county URL. These
methods return only primary URLs.
 * City/County Data - Only Primary URLs
 If a city or county government has more than one domain or URL,
one URL has been tagged as the primary city or county URL. These
methods return only primary URLs.
 * City/County Data - All Data
 These methods returns all city and county data, including
geographic data for cities and counties that do not have web sites.
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072
Category:Open