Wikidata:WikiProject Government/Report/European Union

Starting the project

First, we had to analyse the existing Gov-Directory for the EU and compare it with the existing data at Wikidata. The EU website, which provides helpful information about the institutions and bodies of the EU, was helpful here. When analyzing the EU page, we noticed that there is no clear demarcation between the different types/ areas of the institutions.

Approach

Compare other countries

At the beginning we thought it might be helpful to understand, how the other country pages are structures and what kind of information are neccessary. We had two major problems with this approach:

1. The structure of the EU is different to regular country governments
2. The information of the existing countries are differently structured as well and do not aways follow the same structure

Structure

What really helped was to analyse the structure of the EU in order to understand the different institutions and start to copy this structure to the gov-page. Under each type of institutions we can add queries, that either delivers the bodies or answers structural questions.

Queries

After browsing existing data at Wikidata and in the internet in general, we realised how hard it is to have a data collection in one place. We came across the idea to generate interesting questions that we want to answer about the EU. Here are some examples of possible questions.

General questions:

• In which years did new countries join the EU?
  I got this to work: [1], although I can't get the UK to behave. --WiseWoman (talk) 10:37, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
• In which year countries have left the EU?
• What languages are spoken in the EU?
• Who was the president of the EU parlament?
• Which countries provided the president of the parliament?

Institutions, Law, Budget:

• Which types of institutions and bodies does the EU have?
• Which organisations are included in the institutions?
• Which countries use the EURO? (Which don't?)

Then we can design queries, which would answer these questions and check the data for missing information. If we find gaps, we can add the missing data.

Agency Model

Another very helpful approach was to check the Govdirectory's Agency data model and check for properties we could not find in the agencies. Since we focused on building a big picture of the EU structure, we focused on the property parent organisation.

Gathering information

The most information we retrieved from the official EU page about their instituions.

Official Websites

• Official webpage of the EU
• European Council
• Court of Justice
• Central bank
• Commission
• European Parliament

Problems and questions to discuss

Understanding political namings of the EU

When we filter the departments at the official EU page for 'EU bodies' we receive 6 results. But when we query at Wikidata for items that are instances of the EU body, but not instances of the other categories like institutions or agencies, we receive 10 results. We then checked each item and compared it with the result list of the official page, in order to identify the additional bodies. The following bodies are not listed at the official page:

• Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (Q28000601)
• European Systemic Risk Board (Q657898)

We did some research on those bodies and it was very hard to understand, why the EU does not list those items. At the offical page of the EU the following description for a 'body' is published: "In addition to the institutions, there are a number of bodies which play specialised roles in helping the EU to fulfil its tasks. Some bodies have the task of advising the institutions (the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions); others ensure that the institutions comply with EU rules and procedures (the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Supervisor). The European External Action Service is an external policy body that supports the EU on foreign affairs matters."

Regarding to this statement, it is very hard to decide whether the additional items should be identified as main bodies or executive agencies. Especially the ESRB could be seen as an agency.

Is Part vs. Subsidiary property

Some institutions had subsidiaries as properties and parts as property. For example we added some organisational councils of the ECB as subsidariary, which could be also seen as a part of the ECB. It was very hard to make a difference here. Also when using the subsidiary property, you should also always add the 'parent organisation' property to the subsidiary instance itself. This felt somehow like redundant work.

Time consuming research

Since we are no political experts, it took more time to understand the structure of all the institutions and the EU in general. For example it was very hard to understand the role of the Directorates-General of the Parliament. It took more time to understand the logic behind these elements, than to add them later in Wikidata, which was frustrating.

Queries did not show updated content

We focused a lot on writing queries and added informations, whenever we found gaps or missing german translations. Sometimes, when updating instances or classes and rerun the query again, the result-list did not show the changed items. We still don't know, why this sometimes happens.

Queries

Note: The check icon means, that we checked all institutions, if these are correct. The queries without check have either less or more institutions, that we could found OR we had no time to complete the list.

Main Orga

• Query of the EU types of agencies Y
• Query of the decentralised agencies of the EU Y
• Query for all agencies of the common foreign and security policy Y
• Query for all Euratom agencies Y
• Query All bodies, that are no institutions, agencies, joint undertaking, interinstitutional services, corporate body and not a part of the Commission.
• Query of the executive agencies of the European Union (should be 6) Y
• Query of Interinstitutional Services of the EU (4 services) Y
• Query of the corporate bodies of the EU Y
• Query of the EU's Joint Undertakings (should be 8) Y

Court of Justice of the European Union

• Query of the over all the administrations of the Court of Justice, which is a subcategory of the chancellor Y
• Query of all parts of the Court of Justice Y
• Query of all committees of the Court of Justice Y
• Query of all state data protection commissioners Y
• Query of all all subclasses of the Court of Justice
• Query of all all chancellor who are from Germany Y

Parliament

• Query of all subsidiaries of the parliament Y
• Query of all parts of the parliament (subsidaries, members and presidents)
• Query of all committees of the parliament
• Query of all delegations of the parliament
• Query of all political groups of the parliament
• Query of all intergroups of the parliament
• Query of all Directorates-General of the parliament

Council of the European Union

• Query of all 10 different configurations in which the Council meets Y

European Council

• Query of all parts of the EC.
• Query of all leader, that come together at the EC. (27 leaders of the countries and president of the Council and Commission) Y

European Central Bank

• Query for all subsidiaries of the ECB

Added & Updated Entries

New Classes/ Instances

• corporate body of European Union
• Interinstitutional Services of the European Union
• Types of agencies:
  • executive agency
  • decentralised agency
  • common foreign and security policy agency of the European Union
  • Euratom agency
• The Conference of Delegation Chairs of the European Parliament
• College of Quaestors of the European Parliament
• General directon management of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• General Directorate of Multilingualism of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• General Directorate of Information of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• General Council of the European Central Bank

Updated Instances

• Exchanged all "European Union agency" classes to decentralised agency, common foreign and security policy agency of the European Union , Euratom agency (executive agencies have been already referenced correctly)
• Added all subsidaries to the European Parliament
• Added 'parent organisation' attribute with the value "European Parliament" to all subsidaries of the EP
• Added Roberta Metsola as current chairperson to the European Parliament
• Added 'a part of' the European Union to the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Added chancellor as a Part of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Updated Directorates-General of the European Parliament
• Updated DG European Parliamentary Research Service
• Updated The Conference of Delegation Chairs of the European Parliament
• Updated European School of Administration
• Updated Computer Emergency Response Team of the European Union
• Updated European Ombudsman
• Updated European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation
• Updated European Training Foundation
• Updated European Maritime Safety Agency
• Updated European Labour Authority
• Updated European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency
• Updated European Institute for Gender Equality
• Updated European Food Safety Authority
• Updated European Fisheries Control Agency
• Updated European Environment Agency
• Updated European Defence Agency
• Updated European Chemicals Agency
• Updated European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
• Updated European Banking Authority
• Updated European Union Aviation Safety Agency
• Updated Agency for Support for BEREC
• Updated European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators‎
• Updated The entry European Court of Justice is replaced by Court of Justice of the European Union
• Updated Court of Justice of the European Union has part(s) of the class General directon management, General Directorate of Multilingualism and General Directorate of Information
• Updated Council of the European Union ‎
• Updated European Central Bank ‎
• Updated Governing Council of the European Central Bank‎
• Updated Executive Board of the European Central Bank
• Updated decision-making body

Clear wrong data

• Committee for the Prevention of Torture is not a body of the European Union
• Administrative Commission for the Coordination of Social Security Systems is not a body of the European Union

Conclusion & Retrospective

In this report we were able to get a closer look at Wikidata. It is very informative that the users get first-hand knowledge and also import knowledge. In addition, Wikidata is a very nice platform to acquire new knowledge. But we have to say, that Wikidata has following risk: The knowledge that is disseminated may well be erroneous knowledge. In this case, a verification of the data would really facilitate the system. Against argued one cannot know whether the knowledge, which comes from other platforms or institutes is always a correct knowledge. Here, the information procurers themselves should insist on the correctness of the information and do research.

In retrospect, it can be said that Wikidata, after some training, is a platform with which we would like to continue working. Our topic was the European Union, this has developed into a never-ending love story. We can add an infinite amount of information and also update outdated information. Afterwards, check again the information we have added with the current date for correctness. This cycle can go on for an eternity.