'TSAPI' Survey Data Transfer Initiative Launches

Five UK-based research tech firms and associations have launched a non-profit initiative called TSAPI, inviting the market research sector to come together to create an industry API (advanced programming interface) standard for transferring survey data, and then share it globally.

As an industry, there is currently no accepted standard for exchanging survey data directly. The team supporting TSAPI - the Association for Survey Computing (ASC), and companies Cobalt Sky, Bayes Price, Digital Taxonomy and Askia - says that relying on transferring data via file-based exchange mechanisms such as .SAV and Triple-S, is becoming 'increasingly irrelevant' in a world defined by interconnectivity across all platforms and devices.

The aim of the TSAPI initiative is to help improve connectivity within the market research industry, while acting as a bridge to enable the connection and flow of MR insights to other industries and sectors. An initial proof of concept has been developed, providing a public-facing web page at www.tsapi.net , through which anyone can see what methods the API supports, how to use them, and what data they return. Visitors to the page can experiment with the API, make suggestions and even make changes to the code themselves.

Matt Gibbs, MD at Bayes Price, comments: 'This is a time of wonderful opportunity. Data feeds the 21st century digital economy and TSAPI provides a chance to plug our MR services into the wider economic system. To be clear, everybody is freely contributing their time and resources to the initiative, and TSAPI's strategic objectives are to help preserve and develop MR's position at the heart of businesses intelligence'.

The TSAPI launch presentation is available at: www.ascconference.org/events/online-series-tsapi , and the team behind the launch is inviting collaboration for the initiative in the form of coding, time, resources, ideas and financial contributions.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.