What public APIs are provided by Governments to the public?

I stumbled across NOAA's SOAP Service and it got me thinking. What other eGovernment services are provided to Business and the general public by Governments? I know the United States has a lot APIs, but what about other governments like the European Union. I am interested in not just SOAP but any Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service available to the public over the internet. I am interested in more than just data sources, but other types of APIs as well.

Suddenly I feel proud to be a British Citizen... are you ready? Good:

HMRC (the lovely people who take our tax off us) provide a fully documented API, see here, for filling in just about every form they have. Not only that, but they define a whole set of schemas and everything available here: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards.aspx

All I can say is my estimation of the UK gov't went up when I disccovered that.

Unfortunately that's as far as it goes, but still, an API for interacting with the HMRC is very, very useful.

We also have data.gov.uk where an entire archive of government data is made available; I believe there are APIs for accessing it too.

Edit: I have just stumbled across another UK data source/API:

Ordnance Survey Mapping Data (openspace). Some things have already been done with openspace I believe; still, free access to OS's maps to manipulate how you will is very, very good. Ordnance Survey maps of the UK are very high quality and come in varying levels of accuracy and for different purposes (for those who haven't lived/travelled in the UK).

Edit 2: Look at this! The World Government Data Store API from the guardian. A newspaper, writing an API...! I'm in shock. Sticking to UK themed APIs, here's the API directory of the UK from programmableweb.

France

Germany

United Kingdom

United States of America

I started compiling an answer with a list of APIs per countries, but I realized I wouldn't have the time so here's already a few pointers.

API Directories

At ProgrammableWeb:
- Governments Mashups and APIs
- Government Tag
- Search for 'Government'

Looking for APIs Online

e-Government APIs on Google Scholar
"REST API" Google searches for:
- .govt.nz
- .gouv.fr

Public API Efforts

Open Government Data Initiative