UK Parliament Ontologies

Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament (and hopefully beyond).

Edited by Anya Somerville (@anyaso.bsky.social) - House of Commons Library.

Models

Interface

  1. Interface classes

    An ontology describing interfaces between models used by UK Parliament, by means of equivalent classes.

Domain specific

  1. Agency ontology

    A model describing people and groups of people with agency. The model also describes a person’s membership of and positions in groups.

  2. Bill ontology

    A model describing the form of bills before Parliament.

  3. Contact point ontology

    Model to handle the contact details of things. Postal addresses, phone numbers, emails etc.

  4. Contribution ontology

    A model to handle contributions to things by agents.

  5. Delegated legislation ontology

    A model describing delegated legislation as expressions of works.

  6. Delegation ontology

    A model describing the enabling of secondary legislation.

  7. Depositing ontology

    A model describing the commitment to make and the making of a deposit in the Library of either House.

  8. Election ontology

    A model describing elections, for example: general elections, by-elections to the House of Commons, by-elections of excepted hereditary peers in the House of Lords and elections to positions including that of the Speaker of the House of Commons. The model describes the result of an election regardless of the process by which that election has been conducted, and covers election returns by the 'first past the post' system and those which follow other methods. Where applicable, the model is aligned with the Cabinet Office Election Result Data Standard.

  9. Formal body ontology

    A model describing formally constituted bodies, including committees.

  10. Formal body affiliation ontology

    A model describing specialisations of group affiliations and positions specific to formal bodies, for example: ex-officio membership of a committee, or chairing of a committee.

  11. Geographic area ontology

    A model describing geographic areas in the UK - being constituency areas, local authority areas, countries, and statistical regions within England - and the containment relationships between such areas.

  12. Geographic area overlap ontology

    A model describing overlaps in area, number of residential properties or total population from a named geographic area to a succeeding or preceding named geographic area, for example: a UK Parliament constituency.

  13. House membership ontology

    A model describing the occupation by a person of a seat in a House, by means of an incumbency over a period of time.

  14. Laying ontology

    A model describing the laying of papers into a House and the authorities those papers are laid under.

  15. Making available ontology

    A model describing the act of making material available to a House and any subsequent withdrawal.

  16. Oral contribution ontology

    A model describing the reporting of oral contributions to a parliamentary proceeding.

  17. Order to print ontology

    A model describing an order to print by a House.

  18. Paper ontology

    A model describing papers, their types and their presence in bundles and in series.

  19. Paper type ontology

    A model describing the relationships between types of papers.

  20. Parliamentary bloc ontology

    A model describing the whipping of a Member to a parliamentary party or the affiliation of a Member with a parliamentary bloc. A parliamentary bloc may be a parliamentary party, or may be a non-political group, for example: the Crossbenchers in the House of Lords.

  21. Peerage ontology

    A model describing peerages, the holding of peerage by a person, Letters Patent affirming the creation of a peerage - and kingdoms, monarchs and reigns as they apply to peerages.

  22. Petition ontology

    A basic model to allow for the subject indexing of petitions.

  23. Presentation ontology

    A model describing the presentation of papers into a House.

  24. Procedure ontology

    A general purpose process flow model used to describe parliamentary procedure as a set of steps connected by routes. A step is a waypoint in a process, a route is a direction between steps and a procedure is analogous to a map of all possible routes. The model also describes the package of work in Parliament resulting from a bill or an instrument subject to a procedure.

  25. Procedure step annotation ontology

    A model describing annotations added to procedure steps by the Indexing and Data Management Section of the House of Commons Library. Annotations are used to describe how a procedure step is actualised.

  26. Publisher ontology

    A model describing the publishing of material by offices within Parliament, for example: the House of Commons Library.

  27. Question and answer ontology

    A model describing questions and answers in Parliament, types and forms of answers expected - and allocations to answering bodies.

  28. Record ontology

    A model informed by FRBR - describing works, collections of works, their expressions and manifestations.

  29. Reporting ontology

    A model describing the reporting to a House by a formal body.

  30. Standing order ontology

    A model describing standing orders of legislatures and changes to standing orders over time.

  31. Submission ontology

    Model for calls for submissions into Parliament.

  32. Tabling ontology

    A model describing the act of tabling by a Member.

  33. Time period ontology

    Model for Parliamentary and associated time periods.

  34. Treaty ontology

    A model describing treaties made available to Parliament.

  35. Written statement making ontology

    A model describing the act of making of a written statement available to a House.

  36. Written statement ontology

    A model describing written statements made to a House, being expressions of written statement works.

Common

  1. Related item ontology

    Provides a means to link from a modelled thing to either another modelled thing or a thing at a URI by means of a typed relationship.

  2. Utility ontology

    Provides a set of common properties available for use by other models. Includes modelling for basic web links and alternative identifier schemes.

Deprecated

  1. Citation ontology

    A model describing the relationship between a thing having a citation and the thing or URI being cited.

  2. Concept ontology

    Concept ontology for UK Parliament. Deprecated in favour of SKOS.

  3. Government organisation ontology

    Adds some specialised classes to the agency model to capture specific types of incumbencies, positions and groups.

  4. Place ontology

    Place ontology for UK Parliament.

  5. Stats series ontology

    Statistical series ontology for UK Parliament. Primarily aimed at modelling statistical information around places. Deprecated in favour of RDF Data Cube.

Elsewhere

SPARQL queries

  1. Query library

Weeknotes

  1. Weeknotes

Trello

  1. Procedural board
  2. Main board

Blog posts

  1. Modelling Parliaments
  2. Teeny tiny, fag-packety, parliamentary data models
  3. Mithering about the unmodellable
  4. Attempting to teach parliamentary procedure to machines
  5. What would Erskine May do?