Why this exists
This project is started by two people who tired of going to government and bank sponsored hackatons to waste time, because these parties do not provide any kind of API to play with.
There were more than 10 of such hackatons, spanning different years, with not significant results. The whole blockchain and crypto scene went raise and fall over the Gartner curve, it is 2021, there is an exodus of talented people from Belarus, and we still haven't got any sane or public API from banks to play with.
If we need it, we need to design it. Even if costs us time and money which is not compensated. But in ideal world it would be great to raise funds and not just do the API, but also teach others the best practices in creating these interfaces for the digital world.
What we know about current status and prior work
If something changed, pretty please send a PR.
- Banks in Belarus don't expose any public API
- National Banks provides some API which lacks consistency (sometimes it is CSV, and sometimes a ZIP file)
- Mobile operators have no Open API even for balance checks
- National Bank of Republic ordered a research about Open API
- Researchers on the payroll had development experience in REST API and Open API in general
- Reachable experts in REST API are unlikely to have experience in public API matters either (no open source accounts, no public blogs)
- We don't know what funding is available, and how the budget was spent. For the future research the National Bank should require public profile of all experts
- The research about Open API is not publicly accessible. Under the new head, National Bank decided not to publish it for whatever reason.
What we do
There not much going on, because.. well, so many exciting things, so little time for experiments. But maybe we should start bi-weekly meetings. If you want to help - just open an issue - we are probably all subscribed to get nudged.
Our goal is to design, clarify and enable the usage of Open APIs on governmental, business and personal levels, providing public place for discussion and open playground for all interested parties.
We still believe that waiting for something to happen is a fruitless strategy. :)
Is this project sponsored
No, and that's probably our mistake. Because money is a good way to get even unexperienced people to deal with tough problems. And the problem of ideal API is tough. Getting some funds would definitely burn some desire to measure and distribute them using the APIs we create. So jump in if you have some ideas.
Who are we (in the order of appearance)
- @chertby
- @abitrolly
- @tbicr
- @R0bur
Send a PR to add yourself to the list and join the party.