[Tagging] Tagging of a politician's office

[Nathan Case]

On 12/05/2022 10:55, Minh Nguyen wrote:
> I was aware of the narrower British definition of government but 
> figured that government=* is already applicable beyond Whitehall, 
> quite literally in the case of government=parliament.

You're right, it is, of course, applicable beyond Whitehall. There are 
many government offices throughout the country. The topic of the 
parliamentary estate (Palace of Westminster) is interesting. I see it 
was originally tagged as amenity=parliament but has been brought into 
the government=* scheme. I can understand wanting to bring parliament 
and other legislative buildings under the government tag - even if they 
are, at least in some countries, very much distinct entities.

> There's inevitably a limit to how well we can model the world's 
> governmental structures atop UK terminology. As fascinating as it is 
> to hear about the particulars in each jurisdiction, I think these 
> differences serve as arguments against oversimplification.

Agreed.

I think the crux is: should a politician's constituency office (i.e. 
located outside the main legislative building) come under a government 
key (rather than a generic office key)? Based on a strict reading of the 
current definitions alone, the answer is no.

office=government: "to tag government offices of a (supra)national, 
regional or local government agency or department" [1]

government=*: "to define subtypes of government agencies and 
institutions". [2]

No mention of individual legislators/representatives in either. Based on 
that, and the fact that in some (many?) countries the legislators aren't 
necessarily part of government or a government body (in the strict 
sense), I think the oversimplification would actually be to tag them 
with the government=* key. I think office=politician is more sensible as 
it works whether you count politicians/legislators as part of government 
or not.

However, I do concede this sort of reasoning was brought up [3] back 
when the government key was approved and was overruled by majority vote. 
I suppose it could also be argued that legislators are a subtype of a 
government institution (i.e the legislative body).

> In the interest of avoiding confusion, maybe more descriptive, 
> top-level tags such as office=constituent_service and 
> office=political_campaign would be appropriate. office=* is already 
> quite a flexible key as it is.

I'm not against that for campaign offices as it does sound like they 
carry out a different function.

Note: I'm also open in terms of whether we should use politician or 
legislator. Legislator sounds very American English to me, but is still 
correct in British English. But perhaps there are politicians who aren't 
legislators? I guess "politician" includes holders of political offices, 
or other elected officials, who don't make laws?


[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Aoffice%3Dgovernment

[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:government

[3] e.g., 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2016-February/028583.html