U S Bureau of Census : FedScoop Names Census Bureau as Innovator of the Year

The U.S. Census Bureau's City Software Development Kit (CitySDK) received the FedScoop 50 Award as the federal government's Innovation of the Year for providing developers with a user-friendly data toolbox to build applications that explore issues facing communities.

Launched June 2015 during the National Day of Civic Hacking, CitySDK connects the Census Bureau's application programming interface (API) to any other open data delivered through an API. The tool has the capability to easily mash up data from different sources, saving hours of developer coding time.

'The vast amounts of demographic and economic data that the Census Bureau collects have the power to transform how community leaders make decisions,' said Avi Bender, the Census Bureau's chief technology officer. 'CitySDK enables developers to create tools that put the data out there to be understood and integrated into business processes and applications.'

In line with the Open Government Initiative, the API is just one part of the Census Bureau's digital transformation. Together with other innovations, such as the mobile apps America's Economy, dwellr and PopQuiz, the Census Bureau is using 21st century technology to meet its centuries-old mission of making the statistics that define our growing, changing nation more accessible than ever before.

Visit the Census Bureau's developers page to learn more about CitySDK.