Enabling Data API for your Citizen Space Site

This guide explains what it means to enable the Data API for your Citizen Space site.

What does enabling Data API mean?

Turning on Data API allows your organisation to securely access response data programmatically, rather than manually exporting using e.g. CSV or XLSX files.

It does not:

  • Change how respondents submit responses
  • Affect your existing activities
  • Make your data public

It provides an additional, secure way to access your Citizen Space data.  

What can you use it for?

Enabling data API offers a wide range of functions. It is commonly enabled for the following purposes:

  • Automate reporting into Power BI tools (e.g. dashboards)
  • Integrate data with internal systems (e.g. CRM or data warehouse)
  • Retrieve response data on a scheduled or ongoing basis

API doesn't make changes to how your standard Citizen Space reporting features work, these remain available and work as they always have.

Access and security:

Data API uses an API key, this key is a secure code used to allow another system or application to access your Data API. It acts like a password that identifies who is making the request and confirms they are allowed to retrieve data.

Only Site Administrators can generate and manage the necessary API keys, ensuring that sensitive information remains under your organisation’s governance.

You maintain full responsibility for how these keys are used. This ensures that data is only ever shared with trusted, customer-controlled services that comply with your specific security and data protection policies.

Does anything change for respondents?

No. There is no visible change to your activities or response data, and respondents will not notice any difference.

Can it be turned off?

Yes. API access can be disabled if needed, and credentials can be revoked.

What do you need from us?

Before we enable the Data API, we’ll ask a site admin to confirm (in writing) that it's ok for Delib to enable API.

Once we've received confirmed, we can arrange for API to be switched on, and will let you know when it's ready for use. Once you submit your confirmation, the API is usually enabled within the same business day.

For more information about using data API, take a look at our detailed technical documentation in our Gitbook site which you can share with interested colleagues.