Technology firm GovTribe is opening up its federal contracting market data through an API. The API will provide users with real-time contracting information from 130 federal agencies. The company says it will allow interested users to integrate contracting data into their own internal systems.
In building the API, GovTribe says it wanted to simplify government contracting information by providing structured machine-readable data. For example, customers can monitor upcoming opportunities or analyze the procurement history of a specific vendor or agency. The GovTribe API provides the same data used to power its iPhone, iPad, and Custom Reports products.
The API is available as a RESTful web service that outputs JSON documents. It provides entity endpoints with details about U.S government projects, agencies, offices, vendors, people, protests, and categories. For each of those entities, it provides contextual relationships, such as lists of vendors who win small business projects from a specific agency. Additionally, the GovTribe API provides full text search capability across all entity endpoints.
During the beta release API keys are free to all users. After the beta release, GovTribe will provide tiered pricing based on request volume. GovTribe encourages developers and data enthusiasts to provide feedback and feature requests through its GitHub repository.
