Providing public APIs to such information sounds great and I think it should be done but is also probably realistically expensive and peone to security problems. The government seems to have a very difficult time in general running all sorts of web services, it's a nightmare in some jurisdictions to even pay the government money for e.g. tickets... I had a hell of a time paying a ticket in San Diego and had to visit the the courthouse multiple times and file a paper form because my paymentment became "late" when it never showed up in their online database weeks later. I was TRYING to pay them and even going to suffer through the "convenience" fees because they outsourced the website to some crappy company and they still couldn't get it right.