Neclonesoul/sa-public-api-observatory

Independent observability for South African public-data infrastructure — availability, freshness, incidents and interface changes. # SA Public API Observatory > **Find the API. See if it works. See if the data is fresh. Build.** **Independent observability for South African public-data infrastructure.** **Production:** api-observatory-za.tysonbar… **Stable release:** `v1.0.0` The SA Public API Observatory is a public, machine-readable catalogue and independent observability system for South African public-data infrastructure and the wider ZA API ecosystem. It answers three separate questions: 1. **What public-data infrastructure exists?** 2. **Is it actually working?** 3. **Is the data being served still current?** Publication, transport availability, and data freshness are deliberately treated as different facts. An endpoint returning HTTP `200` does **not** necessarily mean its data is current. --- ## Why this exists Public APIs, statistical systems, GIS services, and open-data portals are increasingly important infrastructure. But discovering that an API exists is not enough. A useful public-data system also needs to answer: - Is the endpoint reachable? - Is the payload structurally valid? - How reliable has it been? - Is authentication unexpectedly required? - Is it rate-limited? - Is the published data fresh? - Has its interface or schema changed? - Is there an active incident? - When did it recover? - What evidence supports the current status? The Observatory records those observations independently rather than simply repeating publisher claims. **Unknown information remains unknown. Historical observations are never fabricated.** --- ## Who it is for The Observatory is intended for: - software developers integrating South African public data - data journalists and investigative researchers - academics and policy researchers - civic-tech projects - government and public-sector technical teams - businesses that depend on public information - automated systems and AI agents that need machine-readable trust signals --- ## Two explicit universes The cata …