Here’s the announcement from SFgov.org:

We are pleased to announce the release of our Open311 API. The design is a result of a collaborative effort between cities, non-profits and developers. We look forward to seeing what you produce.

You can request an API key from their website and read-up on the Open311 API spec and developer resources here on this website. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them here or on the mailing list. We look forward to working with the developer community and seeing some amazing Open311 apps!

As White House CIO Vivek Kundra joined San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, CIO Chris Vein, and Tim O’Reilly to signal the launch of the Open311 API in San Francisco the work towards spreading an open standard gained huge momentum. Yet we still need continued coordination and collaboration to deliver the vision of a distributed open platform that can be used in communities everywhere.

Both San Francisco and Washington D.C. are preparing to deploy their Open311 APIs within the next week and we will continue to provide updated information on API methods, registering API keys, and the distinction between using the API as a sandbox for testing and using it for full deployment. We will also be sure to clarify any nuances regarding the API implementation in these different cities - such as XML versus JSON output.

This is also a good opportunity to provide more background on the development of Open311. First, the history of the open model:

FixMyStreet was launched in the UK by MySociety almost exactly 3 years ago. This was followed by similar projects in other countries like Verbeter De Buurt in The Netherlands and SeeClickFix in the U.S.. About a year ago John Geraci started a dialog on DIYCity about providing this capability for the 311 system in NYC. This conversation caught the attention of The Open Planning Project which had been developing the idea too. The conversation also caught the attention of Dmitry Kachaev in Washington D.C. who was preparing to launch the second round of the Apps for Democracy contest. As D.C. prepared to open their 311 API, The Open Planning Project began to coordinate this as something that could be made into an open standard and created Open311.org to facilitate this.

Working towards an open standard: In mid 2009 D.C. developed their initial 311 API spec and SeeClickFix also released a draft spec. D.C. launched their API in the summer of 2009 and had many apps developed around it as part of their Apps for Democracy contest. In October of 2009, we held the Open311 DevCamp to help coordinate the development of this standard and related technologies with many different cities and companies. This also signaled the initial development of the Open311 API spec in San Francisco. The team in San Francisco led by Alissa Black and Jay Nath continued to facilitate development of the spec over several months with the input of many people involved in this effort like Dmitry in D.C., Kam Lasater at SeeClickFix, and myself. The current spec in San Francisco reflects this collaboration and their leadership to convene others. The D.C. API spec has also been undergoing a revision to bring it more inline with the spec that has been developed in San Francisco. The specification will continue to evolve through incremental iterations to allow greater interoperability and a better experience for developers and citizens using Open311 services.

The Open311 API spec coordinated by San Francisco is available on the wiki. Despite the fact that the APIs have not quite yet been deployed and some details of the spec have yet to be fully documented, we can already see some examples of the developer community preparing to work with it.

We look forward to working with other cities in support of this standard. Some cities like Boston and Edmonton are set to open their APIs in the near future and other cities like Seattle and Portland do not yet have a call center and should stand to gain a lot by being involved with this initiative from a fresh start. We also look forward to closer involvement with international efforts like Ushahidi. Ushahidi is a collaborative issue tracker which played a crucial role in the response to the earthquake in Haiti.

Stay tuned for more details about the deployment of the APIs, the release of reference implementations, and code libraries that can help provide integration with existing 311 systems.

Please leave us with your questions and comments and let’s continue to work together.

As San Francisco and Washington D.C. prepare to launch their new APIs we’d like to have other cities and managers of 311 services show their support for implementing an interoperable standard for these APIs. The more cities get behind this effort, the better for developers, for city budgets, and for citizens. Showing a critical mass of support for using this standard will help encourage developers, other cities, and existing 311 services to become more invested in the potential of an interoperable system.

A standard means that people can use their favorite app in every city and developers can focus on new features rather than different requirements for each city. Everyone can then benefit from new innovations built from a common foundation. Additionally, interoperability is helpful not only to simplify the offering of citizen interfaces, but also to help unify and better facilitate inter-agency coordination for city managers.

To date, the people who have joined San Francisco and Washington D.C. by showing their support for implementing a standard API include directors of these services and CIO or CTOs in cities like Boston, Portland, Edmonton, Seattle, and Los Angeles as well as those from services like SeeClickFix and Ushahidi.

Please take the pledge and show your support.