Published

Public Office

vr.wm-org-009 · wm-org-009-public-office

Describe one enduring public office, its evidenced authority and its qualified links to holders, tenure and accountability records.

World Models Society, people and institutions SOC.ORG.OFF

Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Classifiers What it is Why it exists Distinguishing features What robots and AI may and may not do Moral aspects Owners Links to other meta-models Identity and identifiers Direct properties Recognition Capabilities and actions Hazards and failure modes Standards and interfaces Context of use Sources

Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled

6 bundles · 12 layers · 12 findings · 36 questions

Office identity and basis Establish the enduring subject and its qualified legal context.

Office identity

Resolve one office independently of holders, titles and physical premises. Seat or joint-office granularity must be explicit; neither a name match nor a shared holder authorizes merging records.

Persistent office and aliases

Resolve one office independently of holders, titles and physical premises. Seat or joint-office granularity must be explicit; neither a name match nor a shared holder authorizes merging records.

Which qualified master identifier resolves this office and its historical aliases? identity
Does the record denote a single seat, a joint office or an office class, and what distinguishes it from a body or person? classification
What evidence supports continuity when a title or identifier changes? validation

Establishment and profile

Bind the office to a cited establishment basis and adopting jurisdiction profile. Constitutional, statutory or other recognized bases require evidence; creation by a new enactment is not universal. Keep uncertain existence claims reviewable.

Office existence and legal context

Which instrument or recognized legal basis establishes this office under the applicable profile? authority
When is that basis asserted to take effect, change or cease, and at what time precision? temporal
Which evidence and reviewer support the current existence status? evidence

Context and authority Locate the office within institutions and bounded competence assertions.

Institution and territorial context

Keep public body, constituency, jurisdiction, site and contact references distinct. A geographical area describes context; it does not by itself prove territorial competence or supply physical measurements for this abstract office.

Body and area relationships

Which institution contains or supports the office during the relevant interval? relationship
Which jurisdiction or constituency is associated with the office, and is it different from its working site? spatial
Which labels and official contact channels describe the office without exposing private holder contacts? definition

Competence and constraints

Record sourced competence and limitation assertions with dates and context. A title, reporting edge or directory entry cannot prove permission to act. Delegation is a referenced instrument with bounded scope, not an inferred transfer of all powers.

Qualified authority assertions

Which functions may the office perform according to the cited authority profile? authority
Which exclusions, consent requirements or joint-action conditions limit an asserted power? constraint
What evidence bounds an alleged delegation and distinguishes it from acting appointment or ordinary reporting? authority

Selection and holding Connect separately mastered people to evidenced assumption and tenure assertions.

Selection and assumption

Reference selection, appointment, election or ex officio basis separately from assumption of duties. Qualification, approval, oath or affirmation requirements are profile-dependent; a missing document means unknown, not automatic invalidity.

Evidence of taking office

Which selection route and competent authority are asserted for this holder link? process
Which eligibility or assumption conditions apply, and what evidence addresses each? requirement
Which observed events distinguish nomination, appointment and assumption of duties? event

Tenure and holder links

Give every tenure assertion its own stable identifier. Holder, office and dates are attributes rather than a composite identity. Preserve joint or competing claims and unknown ends without deciding precedence from recency alone.

Qualified holding intervals

Which independently identified tenure assertion links which person to this office? relationship
What actual and expected boundaries apply to the holding interval, including uncertainty? temporal
How are concurrent holders or competing tenure claims distinguished for the requested date? exception

Vacancy and continuity Describe temporary coverage and evidenced change without inventing legal effects.

Vacancy and acting arrangements

Office existence, occupancy and exercise of particular duties are separate states. Evidence can indicate vacant, unknown, disputed or temporarily covered status. A database gap is not proof of vacancy, and acting authority need not fill the substantive office.

Continuity without a substantive holder

What evidence distinguishes a vacant office from missing or disputed occupancy data? state
Which instrument supports temporary performance of duties and with what limits? authority
How does a holder lookup expose temporary or contested status without certifying legal capacity? validation

Change and cessation

Separate tenure ending from office abolition and from correction of a record. Renaming, merger or reorganization may require a successor reference rather than identity reuse. Do not infer automatic legal effects on prior acts.

Office and tenure transitions

Which evidenced event ended or changed a particular tenure while leaving the office identity intact? lifecycle
What basis supports retirement, abolition or succession of the office itself? lifecycle
How is a retrospective correction distinguished from the historical event it describes? provenance

Accountability and disclosure Track duty references and audience-specific information controls.

Integrity obligations

Record which duty profile applies and references to evidence or oversight records. Scope may depend on capacity, jurisdiction and dates. Declaration absence, an allegation or a data inconsistency does not establish misconduct.

Applicable accountability duties

Which integrity, incompatibility or recusal rules apply to this office and tenure? requirement
Which filing or recusal evidence is linked to each assessed obligation? evidence
Which competent oversight decision, if any, resolves a disputed compliance assertion? decision

Declarations and permitted views

Keep accountability metadata separate from declaration contents and private details. Public access requires a specific disclosure basis; restricted fields and third-party information remain protected. This model records a view decision but never publishes automatically.

Disclosure boundaries

Which audience may access each declaration or office-record field under which rule? access
What redactions or data-minimization controls apply to holder and third-party details? privacy
Which accountable custodian approves and reviews the permitted public projection? ownership

Stewardship and interchange Preserve evidence, retention decisions and semantic qualifiers across projections.

Evidence and record stewardship

Maintain source-linked office assertions with integrity checks and lawful correction/disposal controls. Digests detect byte changes but do not authenticate legal authority. Retention and access policies are adopter requirements, not treaty-derived storage periods.

Assertion integrity and retention

Which source version, assessor and observation support each current office assertion? provenance
Which approved retention, hold and disposal rules apply to each local record class? retention
Which contradictions or stale references require review before an office record is reused? quality

Interchange and acceptance

Align office and tenure concepts selectively to ORG and Popolo. Direct current-holder shortcuts can lose temporal or dispute qualifiers. Conversion requires versioned mappings and explicit refusal where the target cannot retain essential meaning.

Qualified projections and losses

Which mapping version carries office and tenure identities into the target profile? interoperability
Which authority, time, privacy or dispute qualifiers would a projection lose? exception
Which acceptance cases demonstrate that vacancy, joint holding and disputed succession survive the mapping? validation

Classifiers Filled

Family: World Models
Category: Society, people and institutions
Entry kind: entity
Navigation path: NAV.SOC.ORG.OFF
Domain: SOC.ORG.OFF
Industry: Cross-industry
Tags: publicofficesoc.org.off
Also called: A11

What it is Filled

One jurisdiction-qualified office instance, possibly vacant or jointly held, with stable identity across holder changes. The root is a position of public authority, not its incumbent, employing body, building, election or register. Office-specific assertions link to separate person, institution and legal-record masters. Local records describe evidence and uncertainty; they do not create public powers or determine legal validity.

In scope

Office identity, classification, establishing basis, body and territory references, nonphysical properties and continuity
Office-specific competence assertions, selection and tenure links, vacancy and acting arrangements with temporal evidence
Applicable accountability duties, declaration and oversight references, restricted views, provenance and authorized record maintenance

Out of scope

Person biographies, employment/payroll, institution governance, election administration, lawmaking and general legal-document masters
Making appointments, removing holders, exercising or delegating powers, issuing sanctions or deciding the validity of official acts
A universal definition of public official, a complete national office register, or an executable legal-authority engine

Why it exists Filled

Describe one enduring public office, its evidenced authority and its qualified links to holders, tenure and accountability records.

Distinguishing features Derived, awaiting review

Unlike WM-ORG-004 Position: Conceptual specialization candidate only. This root adds public-law basis and office-specific context without ratifying generic Position inheritance or duplicating its operational machinery.
Unlike WM-PER-001 Person and tenure relationship: A person is externally mastered; tenure is a separately identified qualified link, not a second person master. Office identity survives succession and vacancy.
Unlike WM-POL-016 Public Authority / Institution: The body containing or supporting an office is externally referenced. The legacy self-reference for the branch body is rejected; a post is not automatically the institution itself.
Unlike WM-POL-003 Election and WM-ORG-007 Mandate / Charter: Election outcomes and competence instruments are referenced, not authored or validated here. Nomination, election, appointment and assumption of duties can have different effects.
Unlike WM-POL-013 Registry Mandate: A mandate may govern an adopting register; it does not make every office record or declaration public. Public projections require an evidenced disclosure rule.

Note: Derived from boundary notes against neighbouring models.

What robots and AI may and may not do Derived, awaiting review

Must not

Local deletion cannot abolish an office, erase a tenure's legal effect, remove an external master record or invalidate an official act.
Deny access to unclassified payloads; expose only a custodian-approved public or role-specific view grounded in applicable rules.
Exceptional oversight access requires specific authority and purpose; it never becomes a permanent public grant.

Only with a human decision

Public title data does not open declarations or person masters.

May

Resolve an office reference: Proposed operation, not implemented. Resolve a qualified office identifier and aliases without merging by title, holder or site.
Record an office-basis assertion: Proposed operation, not implemented. Link existing establishment or competence evidence with review status; cannot create an office or grant a power.
Link a tenure assertion: Proposed operation, not implemented. Record independently identified holder and interval evidence, retaining competing assertions; cannot appoint or remove anyone.
Inspect occupancy at a time: Proposed operation, not implemented. Return qualified holder candidates and vacancy, acting, stale or disputed status. Absence of data returns unknown, not vacant.
Record accountability evidence: Proposed operation, not implemented. Link a duty to filing or oversight evidence, preserving allegation versus determination and restricted contents.
Prepare an authorized office projection: Proposed operation, not implemented. Build a local recipient-scoped view with mapping and redaction records. Refuse unsupported loss of time, authority or dispute qualifiers.

Note: Derived from functions, policies, CRUD and access rules; prohibitions were not authored for agents as such.

Moral aspects Derived, awaiting review

Approve audience-specific projections, redaction and privacy review
Jurisdiction-specific office definitions, tenure rules, delegation powers, judicial independence, records law, accessibility, privacy and disclosure need qualified adoption review.

Note: Sentences mentioning harm, privacy, consent or similar, collected from the specification.

Owners Filled

Steward

Accountable public register custodian and evidence of stewardship mandate, separate from appointing authority and holder

Roles

Register custodian: Maintain namespace, stewardship mandate and approved record policy
Authority reviewer: Assess establishment, capacity and jurisdiction-profile evidence without automated legal adjudication
Evidence editor: Record attributed links and preserve competing assertions under approved access
Disclosure reviewer: Approve audience-specific projections, redaction and privacy review
Records steward: Apply retention schedules, legal holds and authorized payload disposal
Read-only auditor: Inspect permitted provenance, conflicts and review decisions

Links to other meta-models Filled

aligned

WM-ORG-004 - Candidate Position alignment; boundary and version must be pinned before integration, with no assumed inheritance.
https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-org/ - Conceptual Post and Membership alignment; target mapping requires temporal and capacity qualifiers.
https://www.popoloproject.com/specs/ - Candidate civic interchange with explicit membership-mediated holding; release pin and loss tests remain outstanding.

references

WM-PER-001 - Holder and witness person masters when applicable; do not duplicate biography, identity proofing or person lifecycle.
WM-POL-016 - Candidate body reference with external institution identity and governance. Replaces the erroneous legacy body self-reference conceptually.
WM-ORG-007 - Candidate authority-instrument binding; competence is an evidenced assertion, not inferred from linking this model.
WM-POL-003 - Optional election outcome reference for elected offices; no election administration or assumed mandate validity.
WM-POL-013 - Optional adopting register mandate governing access and stewardship; no universal public-register requirement.

neighbor

WM-ORG-004 Position - Conceptual specialization candidate only. This root adds public-law basis and office-specific context without ratifying generic Position inheritance or duplicating its operational machinery.
WM-PER-001 Person and tenure relationship - A person is externally mastered; tenure is a separately identified qualified link, not a second person master. Office identity survives succession and vacancy.
WM-POL-016 Public Authority / Institution - The body containing or supporting an office is externally referenced. The legacy self-reference for the branch body is rejected; a post is not automatically the institution itself.
WM-POL-003 Election and WM-ORG-007 Mandate / Charter - Election outcomes and competence instruments are referenced, not authored or validated here. Nomination, election, appointment and assumption of duties can have different effects.
WM-POL-013 Registry Mandate - A mandate may govern an adopting register; it does not make every office record or declaration public. Public projections require an evidenced disclosure rule.

What else AI and robots need to interact with it Incomplete

Sources Filled

The Organization Ontology - World Wide Web Consortium
Popolo Post specification - Popolo project
Popolo Membership specification - Popolo project
United Nations Convention against Corruption - United Nations
The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription - United States National Archives
PROV-O: The PROV Ontology - World Wide Web Consortium
Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps - Internet Engineering Task Force

Open questions

Run the coordinator source checker, then verify authentic source versions, effective law, domestic implementation and permitted source reuse for each adopting profile.
Implement nested office and tenure schemas and mappings with fixtures for vacancy, joint holding, competing claims, temporary duty performance, date correction, redaction and lawful disposal.
Validate candidate neighbor bindings and expand specialist office-family coverage without taking ownership of external person, institution, election or instrument masters.
Restore independent external review before any canonical or publishable-draft promotion.
Independent external review is absent; Claude and Grok are skipped under the owner waiver.
Direct HTTP checks are unmeasured under the owner-reported sandbox block; browser readings do not close source authenticity, version, currency or applicability verification.
Nested instance schemas, executable functions, mappings and adversarial fixtures are not implemented.
Jurisdiction-specific office definitions, tenure rules, delegation powers, judicial independence, records law, accessibility, privacy and disclosure need qualified adoption review.
No comprehensive treatment of customary, international, hereditary, military, collective or emergency offices; profile-specific legal bases and authority disputes remain research gaps.

Machine files

Card as JSON Specification AGENTS.md Source Card backlog vercy.card/1

Provenance

world-models research · reviewable-draft

Built from: models/wm-org-009-public-office/spec.yaml