I'm all for accountability, but I also think added bureaucracy is a waste of money. Someone has to pay for these new jobs, and I can't tell whether this will return more than it costs to set up.
the way I read it, the OP's "new jobs" would be jobs created in the private sector by people making use of the data. I don't think he was referring to the cost of creating the API itself.
The API could be created as a F/OSS project and be done with that line item ;).
