NISC Modernizes API Management with Swagger and AWS

Overview

National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) is a member-owned technology company serving more than 1,000 rural energy and communications companies across the U.S., American Samoa, Palau, and Canada. NISC provides advanced, integrated IT solutions for consumer and subscriber billing, accounting, engineering, and operations, along with a wide range of other leading technologies. As its software ecosystem expanded, NISC sought to modernize its application programming interface (API) management strategy to better support both internal teams and its member community. Its current solution of an intranet scattered with static PDFs made it hard to keep information current and harder for users to find.

As members increasingly expected self-service API access, NISC adopted Swagger – seamlessly integrated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) – as an interactive, centralized API platform to strengthen governance, enhance cross-team collaboration, improve member experience, and reduce QA testing time.

Approach

• Standardized on Swagger as a single platform for API design, documentation, and collaboration, rolling it out in phases to accelerate adoption and value.
• Shifted away from static PDF-based documentation by making API documentation easier to access and keep current.
• Expanded the use of Swagger across development teams to support a design-first approach and ensure consistent standards across the API ecosystem.
• Integrated Swagger with AWS to enable streamlined API publishing, versioning, and lifecycle management.

Benefits

By centralizing its API workflows and adopting a design-first approach with Swagger, NISC realized significant gains across development efficiency, testing velocity, and member experience. The shift to a unified, interactive API platform enabled faster issue identification, stronger governance, and improved collaboration between development and QA teams. Members also benefited from a modern, self-service portal that replaced static PDFs with real-time, accurate API information. With 30% of its applications already running on AWS and plans to expand further using Amazon API Gateway, Swagger offers seamless support for the organization’s continued modernization.