Today - in order to create a visualization like the proof-of-concept map at http://is.gd/ortizmap - one should use a technique called "scraping" that is costly both for the White House server and the client. Such a process may take 10-20 minutes - costly enough to exclude the possibility of making such tools available as web services.
Modern integration would allow such services to update in real time and would enable many new applications (for example: embedding live signature updates in a site promoting a petition).
In November 2012, an issue was opened regarding this on the White House petition's code repository: http://is.gd/whpetitionissue44 and this should be easy to implement (as noted in the comments there).
Hopefully, this petition can raise awareness to the issue.
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