This is a proposal for the creation of a set of simple, distributed ETL web services with the goal of increasing accessibility and openness of data publicly available on the web. With these tools, the civic data community can (mostly) bypass existing bottlenecks and create an immediately useful ecosystem to build upon. It is possible (indeed, likely) that ETL micro-services will be superseded by tools like dat that will address a much wider range of data management needs, but that does not negate the need for a stopgap tool.
- Data is accessible over HTTP, but in a non-standard format
- Systems can't directly depend on a data source because of slow response times
- Public data is only accessible through an authenticated API