[Data-modeling] associating OMB codes with US government agencies -- best way to model?

[Jeff Prucher]

Definitely a complicated problem!  I'd favor something like #1 -- otherwise
we get a bunch of semi-duplicate topics (people are going to think
<http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000cad7bd9?
domain=%2Fbase%2Fstimulustracking> is the same as
<http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/united_states_department_of_agricul
ture?domain=%2Fbase%2Fstimulustracking>).  However, if you want to make
topics for every single line item (e.g., anything with a bureau number),
we'd need to find a way to do that.  Something like a "US Gov't Agency" type
with a property for OMB number (which would include "Gov't Agency", and a
separate type for "OMB Bureau" or something, with a property for OMB Bureau
#, and which would sometimes be cotyped as a Gov't Agency, (like for the
Gov't Accounting Office) and sometimes not (like "Military Personnel" under
the DoD).

I'd actually favor a "US Gov't Agency" type for things like OMB #s, even
though not all of them actually have #s. That way, if we need to add
additional US-specific properties, we don't need a new type for each one.
(We did something similar when we created types for Canadian and Australian
MPs when someone wanted to load unique ids for these countries' members of
parliament.)

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Raymond Yee
> Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:58 AM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: [Data-modeling] associating OMB codes with US 
> government agencies -- best way to model?
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've been doing work in trying to model the US federal 
> government.  I have found that that in the US Federal Budget 
> (and in other contexts such as the the reporting of Recovery 
> money), government agencies and their sub-agencies 
> ("bureaus") are associated with an "agency code" and an 
> "bureau code".  For example, the Department of Agriculture 
> has an agency code of 005 and one of its bureaus, the 
> National Agricultural Statistics Service, is denoted by an 
> agency code of 005 and a bureau code of 15.  (See 
> http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/db_guide.pdf for more
> details.)  
> 
> I've done some reconciliation work to map these "OMB codes" 
> (names after the Office of Management and Budget) to the 
> Freebase ID of their respective government agencies.  I have 
> an OPML file 
> (http://labs.dataunbound.com/doc/2009/06/OMB_A_11_C_reconciled
.v0.1.xml
> )  that shows my current mapping  and a Yahoo! UI treeview 
> rendition of the data at 
> (http://labs.dataunbound.com/doc/2009/06/govt.treeview.v0.1.html 
> 
> Now I'd like to upload those codes to Freebase, but would 
> like to get some advice about how to model this data.  I've 
> set out two schemas in the sandbox:
> 
> 1) The first is found at
> http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/base/stimulustrack
ing/agency_with_omb_code
> -- I created an "Agency with OMB Code" type, which has an 
> included type of /government/government_agency and the 
> following additional
> properties:  agency_code, bureau_code, and label properties.  
> You'll see from 
> http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/base/stimulustracking/age
ncy_with_omb_code?domain=%2Fbase%2Fstimulustracking 
> that I would then associate USDA as a "Agency with OMB Code".   I 
> loosely call this the "is-a" approach -- USDA "is-a" "Agency 
> with OMB Code".
> 
> 2) The second is found at
> http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/base/stimulustrack
ing/omb_code
> -- I created a "OMB Code" type, which has the properties:  
> agency_code, bureau_code, label, and corresponding agency.  
> The corresponding agency property is a link with an expected 
> value type of /government/government_agency.  Currently, an 
> OMB code object would be a /common/topic (though this might 
> be a bad idea....).  An example:  
> http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000
00000cad7bd9/-/base/stimulustracking
> , which links to USDA through the corresponding agency 
> property.  I think of this as the "has-a" approach:  USDA 
> "has-a" OMB code
> 
> One thing to note:   not every US federal government 
> agency/bureau has 
> an OMB code and not every code corresponds to a particular 
> agency -- but I'd like to still record all the OMB codes I 
> can find.  e.g., there is an OMB code for the "energy 
> programs" of the  Department of Energy.  My understanding is 
> that "energy programs" doesn't correspond to an 
> administrative entity but to a collection of programs in DOE.
> 
> My question:  is #1 or #2 better?  Neither?  Can you tell a 
> yet better model? I realize that I face this type of modeling 
> issue a lot -- for 
> example,   BWV numbers are associated with the compositions 
> of J.S. Bach 
> -- and I started to model this in
> http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/base/jsbach/bach_compositi
> on -- to extent /music/composition to 
> /base/jsbach/bach_composition and add a BWV property.  But is 
> this the best way to do this modeling?
> 
> Thanks!
> -Raymond
> 
> 
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