Googles Embeddable Approach to the Civic Information API

by Kin Lane on 01/16/2013

I stumbled across the Google Civic Information API today, which allows developers to build applications around civic information including polling place, early vote location, candidate data, and election official information. As soon as I landed on the home page, I scanned the left hand navigation, and noticed the option for "embeddable tool".

As you know embeddable tools are are something I advocate all API owners should consider when assembling the building blocks of your API. I like Google's approach to the Google Voter Information Tool, which lets users look up their polling place, early vote sites, ballot, and election official information for the US 2012 General Election.

To support the embeddable tool, Google provides a quick overview, with instructions for "quick embed" and more granular options allowing anyone to configure region, address, local and other advanced settings.

Even though the 2012 election is over, I think Google's approach to providing embeddable tools with their APIs is potentially something that other API owners can follow, which will make your API accessible beyond just the developer community.