The API Ratings Agency names founding board members

The API Ratings Agency (TARA), which describes itself as an industry-wide effort to create an advisory council for API monitoring standards, has named Brian Costello of the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence as one of four founding board members.

Along with Costello, Don Thibeau, formerly of the OpenID Foundation, John Musser, founder of Programmable Web and API Science, and Lorinda Brandon, VP of software development at BetterCloud have been named as board members of the Seattle-based organisation.

APImetrics launched the first independent production monitoring dashboard for Open Banking APIs earlier this year.

“APImetrics has been working in something of a vacuum for the last few years as we have pushed for better standards for API measurement, particularly in the area of Open Banking,” David O’Neill, CEO of APImetrics, said. “At the moment there are no real standards on what should be measured, how it should be measured, and how to read those measurements.

“It’s incredibly painful to see situations where both sides on an API contract think the other is wrong and to eventually realise the truth lies somewhere else.”

The API Ratings Agency aims to release an operating charter and working goals by the end of the year, with its first standards to be published in 2022.

It has identified three areas of focus initially, including defining best practices for production monitoring, agreeing on global performance and quality targets, rather than regional targets, and agreeing on like-for-like monitoring requirements.

Thibeau called the role of the API Ratings Agency “absolutely essential”.

“Without commonly agreed ways to measure and talk about measurement, we will continue to see disagreements between providers and no clear ways for national regulators, especially in financial services, to talk about what is happening,” he added.

TARA is expected to announce additional board members later this month.