I just checked out vets.gov to have a snoop around, and it's mostly quite impressive. But I found an SSL configuration error on this page (https://www.ebenefits.va.gov/ebenefits/vonapp) that will probably prevent vets from being able to use the site. Anyone know where to submit a ticket about that? I got yet another SSL error from the contact form on that page.
Hi! Vets.gov dev here. We're not in charge of VONAPP, but we work with them. I'll see if I can't track down a good contact for this.
Thank you!
For me, the data part is at least as important as the code. I work for UC, and we are working on modernizing the interchange of data between Cal. Public Health and the National Institute of Health for vital records (birth, death, health issues around such).
There are a number of open data reference lists (e.g. - health care facilities) that we are going to be able to snapshot from APIs, rather than maintaining them separately.
This "Federal Source Code" policy is a great extension of the project-open-data initiative released a few years back:
https://github.com/project-open-data
I found the db-to-api project in this repository incredibly useful for quickly and safely exposing data from one of my applications to clients.
The only failing I see to these many many initiatives is that so few people realize these powerful free resources are out there to be taken advantage of. I hope that changes in the future.