Anyone that has ever had to use a U.S. Government website knows that they are horrible. And by horrible I mean awful. And by awful I mean terrible. And by terrible I mean they are abominations of all that is good in the universe and beyond. I have given up hope of these sites joining us in the new millennium but all is not lost.

RSS/XML to the Rescue

There are a few sites that take government data and organize it into usable presentable information a non Tom Cruise type being can interpret. But getting this data means manually scraping it, which …well… sucks. I’m not going to spend my time doing it, and I doubt you would either.

Well the smarty pants guys(I’m just jealous) over at Princeton have written a paper suggesting stop the nonsense redesigning of government websites, and deliver the raw data via a structured format like RSS and XML. This would allow much more talented people to grab the data and run with it. I can only imagine the beautifully usable sites that would come from easily obtainable data.

Throw in an API

It would be pushing it, really pushing it, but creating an API for certain government websites could open all sorts of avenues. Imagine a well done interface for the DMV, complete with AJAX, smooth gradients, and calming pastel colors. I don’t know if we’ll ever see this type of integration but it is nice to imagine.