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Jurisdictional Data

An open ontology of U.S. government — structured as JSON, versioned with Git.

What This Is

Government is made of objects: jurisdictions contain agencies, agencies employ people, people hold positions, agencies provide services. This repository models that structure as a domain-driven ontology of public civic data.

Each JSON file represents a single entity. The directory structure reflects the natural hierarchy of government. Anyone can contribute. Any application can consume it.

Directory Structure

jurisdictions/             # Geographic/political boundaries
  federal/                 #   The United States
  states/                  #   50 states + DC + territories
  counties/                #   ~3,200 counties and equivalents
  places/                  #   Cities, towns, villages, boroughs, CDPs
  school-districts/        #   Administrative school districts
  tribal/                  #   Tribal jurisdictions
agencies/                  # Government departments and organizations
bodies/                    # Governing bodies (councils, boards, commissions)
positions/                 # Roles linking people to agencies and bodies
people/                    # Public officials and government employees
services/                  # Public services provided by agencies
domains/                   # Government web domains (from dotgov registry)
schemas/                   # JSON Schema definitions for each entity type

Jurisdictions are organized by Census geographic level, using Census GEOIDs as the canonical identifiers.

The Ontology

Government entities relate to each other in a clear hierarchy:

Jurisdiction (geographic boundary)
  └── Agency (department, bureau, office)
        ├── Service (permits, licenses, benefits)
        ├── Body (council, board, commission)
        │     └── Position (member seat)
        ├── Position (staff role)
        └── Domain (website)

Person ──holds──▶ Position

Each entity type has a JSON Schema defining its fields and relationships. Cross-references between entities use filenames (without .json extension).

Use Cases

This data is designed to be consumed by any application that needs structured civic data:

  • Civic tech platforms
  • Government directories
  • Open data portals
  • Research and analysis
  • AI and LLM grounding

Clone the repo, read the JSON, build on it.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from anyone. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

The short version:

  1. Fork this repository
  2. Add or update .json files in the appropriate directory
  3. Validate your JSON against the schemas in schemas/
  4. Open a pull request with a description of your data source

All contributions must come from public, verifiable sources. Every file includes a _meta object attributing the source.

Data Sources

Git LFS

JSON files are tracked with Git LFS. Install it before cloning:

git lfs install
git clone https://github.com/jurisdictional/jurisdictional-data.git

License

U.S. government works are in the public domain. Community contributions are licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.