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Welcome
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WikiProject Govdirectory

Main

  

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Queries

  

Data model

  

Error reports

  
Introduction video.

This is a page for the Govdirectory tool and associated WikiProject to improve the data. It aims to become a global user-friendly directory of government agencies and their online presence by utilizing Wikidata. The tool can be reached at govdirectory.org.

The project was supported through Wikimedia Deutschland's Unlock Accelerator (original application). Video from the presentation of the project in the end of the accelerator.

Vision[edit]

Govdirectory is aligned with target 16.7 and 16.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Mission[edit]

Improving the data[edit]

You can help the project by improving data about public agencies on Wikidata. Here is what we know that we need right now:

  1. Add all public agencies. You can start with the ones in your country. Public agencies should be notable, so you don't need to worry about that. Please add sources and/or external identifiers so that it is possible to verify their existence.
  2. Make sure it's possible to differentiate active agencies in contrast to historic agencies in a query.
    1. The most common way to mark that an agency has ceased its operations is by adding dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576) on it. If you don't know the exact date, but are sure it has stopped, you can add unknown value to it (read more on Help:Statements#Unknown_or_no_values).
    2. If the agency was replaced by another (this is not always the case), you can also add replaced by (P1366) to it, linking to the agency that replaced it.
  3. Add basic properties like country (P17) and which administrative level they are on (state, regional, local etc.). How this is modeled may vary by country, and we will try to provide examples for that soon. If possible, add Classification of the Functions of Government (P9798) (just finding official sources for this is valuable).
  4. Add the online platforms you can find for them. Common ones are YouTube channel ID (P2397), Facebook username (P2013), X username (P2002), Instagram username (P2003) and LinkedIn company or organization ID (P4264). But others that they are active on (that have properties in Wikidata) are also good to add. Thanks to Wikidata property to identify online accounts (Q105388954) you can find common properties through a query like this.
    1. Here is an example with Tabernacles for Swedish municipalities.
  5. To keep track, add an Integraality template on a subpage (link will be created if you create the country page with the button below) with the common properties, see example. When you get to 100% on a column, you can exchange it to other properties, see another example.

Data model[edit]

The data model for agencies is a Work In Progress attempt to document current best practices for modelling data about public organizations — please contribute/discuss!

Properties[edit]

A full list of properties are outlined on the Agency data model page.

In most cases that means consistently added instance of (P31) records, as well as basic information (country (P17), inception (P571), dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576) etc) and links to authoritative third-party sources and official identifiers (if they exist).

These are not all used consistently everywhere, and in some cases aren't really used widely enough yet for it to be clear that they are the best approaches for ease of both querying and data entry. Discussion on different/better approaches are very welcome!

Progress Indicators[edit]

As a (very) rough guide to how good the data is in a country, we are tracking what information already exists for the primary house of the national agencies:

  • ☆: Basic structures in place, but all current agencies are not confirmed to have an item yet
  • ★: All current agencies are known to have items, but not all historic have end data yet
  • ★★: Can produce a complete and accurate list of all current agencies
    i.e. each agency has a proper instance of (P31), country (P17) and a correct inception (P571) and all dissolved agencies has dissolved, abolished or demolished date (P576)) OR, the instance of (P31) is only used for current agencies
  • ★★★: All agencies can be queried for their level/type and the structure is documented on the country page
  • ★★★★: Import of official data for Classification of the Functions of Government (P9798) has been made.
  • ★★★★★: A manual review has been made on each agency for which online accounts they have. The review is documented on the country page with a date.

If any level has three stars, it is ready to be included on the website and the process of adding a country can be started.

Everything that has been added to the website can be viewed on the statistics page.

Add your country[edit]

This short video shows how you set up a country page. For more details, with more explanation of what the sections are for (and how to configure the dashboards), see this video.

Browse the mini-projects that have already been created, or set one up for the country you're interested working on (don't just add empty countries, we could have automated this, but this way we get an overview where there are actually people working). To get started, use the button below, which preloads the page with useful section headers and templates. You can also be inspired by the queries and tabernacles on some other countries, where cut and paste and tweak the IDs (Sweden has some that might be interesting). You might also want to check out the list on WikiProject Country subdivision which might have queries done already for some levels.


State level agencies[edit]

Africa
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania

Agencies in first-level administrative division (Q10864048)[edit]

Africa
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania

Agencies in second-level administrative division (Q13220204)[edit]

Africa
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania

Agencies in third-level administrative division (Q13221722)[edit]

Africa
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania

Agencies in fourth-level administrative division (Q14757767)[edit]

Africa
Americas
Asia
Europe
Oceania

Displaying the country on govdirectory.org[edit]

When you have been doing some work on a country, perhaps you also want to get it to show up on https://govdirectory.org/countries. We don't have any strict rules for how many stars it needs to have before it is suitable to do it, but there are some things we use as a guide. First, it has to provide some meaningful value to a reader. This could for example be done by having completed a group of organizations that cover the entire country (like all municipalities) or have a smaller group, but that is very rich with information (for example all the ministries and where each of them also has all public contact details added). If you are unsure, you can either ask on the talk page of the country or create an issue on the repository. When you have decided to move forward, follow this guide.

After the data goes live[edit]

Add the template Govdirectory published on this page and on the type of agencies that has been published. It will show this symbol: File:Govdirectory-logo-orange-transparent.svg:14px. Also update the template Gov directory/Jurisdiction summary with published=yes|url-name= where url-name is the lowercase country name in the URL on Govdirectory.org.

Watch list(s)[edit]

We recommend that you create a subpage with a Template:Wikidata list with the same organizations that gets selected in the country query to make it easier to follow changes that affect the public view. You can for example look at the one for Sweden to be inspired or any other in that category.

Integraality lists[edit]

The Integraality lists can also help watch for changes of the total numbers, but it may be harder to figure out what happened. One way that might be useful is to plugin the query used for Integraality into the SPARQL recent changes tool.

Participants[edit]

[+] Add yourself to the list

The participants listed below can be notified using the following template in discussions:
{{Ping project|Govdirectory}}

Repository for the external facing website[edit]

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