Using PEP data

Dataset selection#

The peps collection contains basic office-holder profiles, but it's missing the data produced through enrichment: relatives and close associates, name aliases in multiple scripts, biographical details, and the topic annotations needed for risk-tiered filtering. The default collection contains all of this.

To work with PEP data from the default collection, filter for entities where topics includes role.pep (the office-holder) or role.rca (their relatives and close associates).

Properties to examine in matched results#

Each match links a Person to one or more Position entities via Occupancy records. The following properties are most useful when assessing a result:

Key properties on an Occupancy:

• startDate and endDate — when the person's specific tenure began and ended.
  • distinct from inceptionDate and dissolutionDate on Position, which record when the office itself existed as an institution.
  • also distinct from periodStart and periodEnd on Occupancy, which record the dates of the fixed office term (e.g. a parliamentary session) and are therefore the same for everyone holding the position during that period.
• constituency — the electoral district or geographic area the holder represented during this term; distinct from subnationalArea on Position, which describes where the office itself belongs (e.g. subnationalArea is Catalonia for a regional assembly seat; constituency is the specific district within it that this person was elected from).
• politicalGroup — the parliamentary group, caucus, or faction the holder belonged to during this term.
• status — how confident we are that the person currently holds the position:
  • current — the source indicates the person is in office. This also covers maintained official lists where a missing end date reliably means current tenure: a source like the EU's MEP register only lists active members, so absence of an end date is itself informative.
  • ended — the person has left the position and an end date is recorded, but they remain within the applicable retention window.

Key properties on a Position:

• country — the territory where the office is held; for diplomatic positions, the host or receiving country. Use this to distinguish foreign PEPs from domestic PEPs.
• subnationalArea — the name or code of a subnational jurisdiction, only when the position is geographically limited.
• topics — classification tags describing the role and jurisdiction of the position, e.g. gov.executive + gov.national for a cabinet minister.

When assessing matches based on position topics, ignore positions with disqualifying topics rather than only considering qualifying ones: if your risk policy covers national government but not local government, ignore positions with the gov.muni topic rather than requiring gov.national.

This is because new positions are added to the database before detailed topic classification is complete. A new, not-yet-classified national ministry will have no topics at all. If you require gov.national, true matches may be ignored. But if you ignore gov.muni, only false positives will be excluded.