OMB issues guidance expanding the OPEN Government Data Act mandate to require federal agencies to publish machine-readable APIs for all high-value data assets by December 31, 2027.
OMB issued Memorandum M-26-02, expanding the OPEN Government Data Act mandate to require that federal agencies publish documented, machine-readable APIs for all data assets designated as high value by their Chief Data Officers by December 31, 2027.
The memorandum defines a high-value data asset as any data asset referenced in more than 100 FOIA requests annually, used by another federal agency under an Interagency Data Sharing Agreement, or designated as mission-critical in the agency's Enterprise Data Inventory.
Agencies must comply with the Federal Data Strategy's interoperability standards, publish API documentation in OpenAPI 3.1 format, implement rate limiting and authentication consistent with federal API security standards, and provide at least 90 days advance notice before deprecating any published API.
The mandate is expected to result in publication of approximately 4,800 new federal APIs over the 24-month compliance period, significantly expanding the machine-readable data available for AI model training, research, and civic technology applications.
GovAcademy's Open Data Policy and Civic Transparency course (GA-026) covers the OPEN Government Data Act framework and the data publishing standards required by M-26-02. The Government API Security course (GA-016) addresses the API security standards and authentication requirements.
The Interagency Data Sharing Agreements course (GA-036) is particularly relevant given M-26-02's ISA provisions, covering updated agreement templates and governance processes.
The CDO Council has established a peer assistance network to help agencies with limited technical capacity meet the 2027 API publication deadline, with GovAcademy providing training support to the network.