I was answering some questions for my partners over at DreamFactory when it comes to APIs in government, and one of the questions they asked was about some examples of the OpenAPI specification being used in government. To help out, I started going through my list of government API looking for any examples in the wild–here is what I found:

• Federal Election Commission (FEC) (OpenAPI)
• System for Award Management (SAM) (OpenAPI)
• US Digital Registry (OpenAPI)
• 18F Open Source Micro Purchasing API (OpenAPI)
• NASA (Couldn’t find OpenAPI in less than 30 seconds)
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) API for Quality Payment Program Measures (OpenAPI)
• National Renewal Energy Laboratory Transportation Laws and Incentives API (OpenAPI)

I am sure there is more OpenAPI in use across government, but this is what I could find in a five-minute search of my API database. It provides us with seven quality examples of OpenAPI being used for documenting government APIs. I don’t see the OpenAPI used for much beyond documentation, but it is still a good start.

If you know of any government APIs that use OpenAPI feel free to let me know. I’d love to keep adding examples to my research so I can pull up quickly when I am asked questions like this in the future, and be able to highlight best practices for API operations in city, county, state, and federal levels of government.