Very cool, thank you for your efforts!<p>You mention that it is hard to check whether information is up to date on the CIA website. I see that Wikidata includes both a "start" and "retrieved" timestamp - as many offices are appointed for a set term, do you think it could be helpful to also include an expected end of term date or would that just make it easier to draw the wrong conclusions from outdated data?
This project deserves more credit than it gets. It is vital to have a clear, unbiased view of our leaders, large and small. For investigative journalism but also for the curious citizen. Being sanctioned is no small matter and being able to find the source opens the door to recourse.<p>I'm happy to see that OpenSanctions choose to become sustainable by allowing companies to get a license to use their data.
I'm not sure about the inclusion of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as separate entities, but listing Governors etc. of dependent territories at the bottom of the UK (Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Pitcairn) which, although they are quite small places, are more independent than Scotland and Wales.<p>I wonder if it would be worth separating US states rather than putting all the US state governors inside the USA. They all have many other state-level positions, it would be good to list those in an organised way.<p>I'm only looking at the <a href="https://peppercat.org/" rel="nofollow">https://peppercat.org/</a> site - I haven't checked the underlying data structure in WikiData, but maybe a fully hierarchical structure is needed. That would also enable adding data about e.g. members of parliament / congress, and to city and council levels by drilling down.
"For the UK, the data is definitely over a year out of date, but also manages to entirely leave out some interesting positions, like the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary"<p>UK reader here. That's interesting ... it's the CIA though: maybe they know something we don't!
There's a Wikidata WikiProject all about modelling politicians[0] if you want to dive straight in to the Wikidata side of things.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_politician" rel="nofollow">https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_pol...</a>
For what is worth, Italy cabinet is also lagging behind <a href="https://www.cia.gov/resources/government/italy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cia.gov/resources/government/italy/</a> this page still doesn't reflecting Mario Draghi taking office.
> Unfortunately Wikidata's single-item-based view, coupled with inconsistent modelling across different countries, makes it really difficult to see what's missing or incorrect...<p>Wikidata modelling is a complete disaster: basically nothing has a solid, documented and maintained model, and no one appears to be working on it very much compared to the amount of poorly-modelled data being poured in.<p>I'm surprised anyone gets anything of use out of Wikidata. Which is an enormous pity, because it's got incredible potential. But that's what I thought 10 years ago, and it's not really got much better, except now there's so much data it times out more often then not unless you are lucky with your query optimization.
This is the sort of thing that really newspapers should take on collaboratively, since they would all benefit from it every day.<p>Sadly, it's a field where egoism rules. Not the only one for sure, but you'd expect better from the class that we, as a society, basically authorize to preach us every day about the values of our time.
It also lost tracks of who runs Italy, it still reports the Giuseppe Conte government but it is almost an year he has been replaced by Mario Draghi's one.