2015-08-11 Meeting notes

Date

11 Aug 2015

Attendees

Decisions

Discussion items

JIRA Issues Review

BE66 Legal Person: Captures formally that we are reintroducing Legal Person. Reverses the prior JIRA issue that stated we would remove that concept.

BE65 findings from the Diff exercise. Relates to missing prefix definitions. Dean has provided David with a list of these. Will be closed today or tomorrow.

BE64 see prior weeks' discussions.

BE63 formalize plugin architecture for jurisdiction specific concepts. May also look at a similar use of the plugin architecture for statute as these by definition vary across jurisdictions.

BE62 issue to raise a JIRA issue. Relates to a particular definition that Pete came up with, but this is not in the comments in this JIRA issue. It is a minor tweak to a definition. We made this change during the meeting and the JIRA issue was to capture this.

BE61 reminder of the importance of using synonyms. Also relates to synonyms Mike needs to introduce in Foundations. Specifically the addition of Natural Person as a synonym for Person in Foundations. Can do a Move action to move to Foundations. MB will raise that issue.

BE60 is duplicate and was deleted.

BE59 additional proposals for partitioning (MB and DN) Trusts are given as an example on this. Relates to the use of Functional Entities. The same considerations arise with governmental entities. There is one thing in a trust, called the Trust Company, which we want to make sure is supported in FBC as a functional business entity. MB questions why this would be in FBC and not in BE is this a finance specific concept or a general concept? If it is a general concept and not financial specific, should it not be in BE? DN wants to remove this from Trusts because it is not a Trust, and therefore not have it in BE. What are the criteria on when to introduce something into FBC and when to have them in BE? The agreed criteria have not changed: if it is finance industry specific it goes in FBC, otherwise if it's a general truth about the business entities world it goes in BE including functional entities.

BE58 views of attorneys on trust and on functional entitis. Companies that perform trust service are not trusts, they are companies. So there is a Functional Entity concept in that?

BE57 was delivered last week can be closed. Is closed.

The ones below this were dealt with last week. DN has a number of new JIRA issues to introduce, which are all written down.

Action: DN will raise these by end of day today if possible.

Anything else in JIRA that anyone wants to bring up today? No!

Today's subject: Government Entities. Believe we have the legal forms at the higher level for everything else, unless there are any questions today? There are not. Governmental Entity is important to a bank for several use cases. A significant use case is a regulatory mandate for banks to understand governmental entities and officials of governmental entities, for bribery, corruption and anti money laundering litigations, e.g. the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. Similarly legislation exists in the UK and other countries. Slide 3 has definitions that Wells uses internally. It is a list of distinct concepts in one definition. Some are more specific to statue. Hence the idea to have plugin architecture for statue. Also interested in any UK based definitions of Governmental Entity. MB notes that this is a list of kinds of thing, not a distinct concept. MB: so we should focus on the meanings of the kinds of thing. Pete Rivett: http://www.accuity.com/industryupdates/freeresources/whatisapoliticallyexposedpersonpep/ link for KYC Politically Exposed Person. Covers stuff around political parties, people and their relatives and families and so on.11

DN agrees we would start by analyzing the individual concepts iterated in these broad definitions, given that each statue is likely to have its own such grabbag of concepts. We do already have Statuary Body, which is any legal person created by any statute in any jurisdiction. And the parallel Chartered Body, for Royal Charter created bodies. Chartered Body is relevant for UK, Canada, Jamaica etc. Statutory Body is intended not to be jurisdiction specific at all. The definition David has harvested is for Statutory authority, which is the term attested as being typical in British and Commonwealth jurisdictions. Yellow FIBO-BE already has the original intended definition that frames this concept. Other synonyms for it are Statutory Authority, Statutory Corporation (in the US) and so on. David has harvested come very specific definitions for some very jurisdiction specific concepts which use this or similar labels. The original Yellow FIBO-BE definition already captures the concept. The word Corporation is not a reliable guide to the concepts, for example US uses Corporation in Statutory Corporation, while the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is a chartered body. The fact that we have used the label corporation for a specific legal form, does not mean that everything which has the word Corporation in its name, is one of those.

Action: David will find out whether the US concept of Statutory Corporation inherits all of the properties of the concept we have labeled Corporation. We know hat the BBC does not.

Governmental Entity is still a bag of different things. Some of these may be independent things and some may be relative things, once we drill down into what they mean. Or Governmental Entity might embody each of them in their independent thing sense? There are 3 concepts in play: the legal entity which is the sovereign, municipality, tribe etc. which incurs debt etc.; there is the relative thing which is the government which governs those things, and there are the (independent) entities which are the agencies, bodies, corporations etc. which are created to carry out the specific tasks of the government. If we get those 3 right, everything else falls into place. Departments of those governments, may be the independent entities which are carrying out those governmental functions. The officials of those entities (officials of an independent thing), are the ones we need to look at for bribery and anticorruption. Governments govern some (municipality, country, subdivision etc.) That's defined in relation to its function so that's a functional entity. (relative). Municipal government should come under this heading.

Igor Ikonnikov: I'd suggest that Aboriginal be used instead of Tribal. Aboriginal means "inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists", while Tribal means "of or characteristic of a tribe or tribes".

Sovereign Entity is currently defined as the government whereas we thought we meant here the legal person that is the Sovereign (the People or the Crown etc.) which incurs the debt. The definition of that of the government of some political subdivision. Need the relationships of the other entities as political subdivisions of the sovereign entity. The sovereign entity in that sense would be the geopolitical construct that is a country, federation, state etc. Federal Entity and Sovereign Entity embody concepts about the state /country / geopolitical entity, and so on. Regionl Government Entity (better labeled Regional government) could be kept at that level without needing to mirror all the geopolitical things that it would govern. Stateowned and statecontrolled thing are owned or controlled by the Sovereign Municipaility, Tribe and so on. These are currently defined as kinds of Legal Person which would mean that these concepts are like Sovereign etc.; whereas the definitions describe a functional entity which is a kind of Government. PR notes we do not have family relations in Foundations, where they should be.

Action: MB Add these to people;rdf in FIBO Foundations.

This is needed for KYC, AML and the rest, e.g. State of California, as a legal person.That is the legal person, whereas the government that governs it. These are 3 simple and distinct concepts. One of which is a relative thing. It does its work through a set of independent things, that are government agencies. Or departments.If the attributes of a thing are immutable, then it is an independent thing.

PR: What is a Social Security number a property of "The Independent thing or the Relative Thing? If SN relates to citizenship, then it is relative to that citizenship or residence. Arguable it is relative to 'Resident'. So it is a property of Pete Rivett as a relative thing. Namely as a resident.http://hypercube.co.uk/incontext/ Federal Reserve what sort of things is that? See model in FBC. There are individuals in FBC both for the independent and relative kinds of thing. We should review what Elisa has published in FBC before the end of this week as per FBC Homework. David is keen that we review that.

In Wells Fargo the Fed is considered an agency or instrumentality of the government. That is, Wells are looking at the Independent Thing. We should use Elisa's work as a basis for determining the criteria for recognizing these kinds of thing. We do not need to do that in a vacuum. The concepts of independent and relative things both exist, and the same labels are often used for both. The Wells definition clearly frames the concept of the relevant independent thing, so there is no problem there. However the definition given by Wells for government Entity seems to range over a range of concepts, not all of which are necessarily independent things however we would probably be able to identify the corresponding independent things from that definition. It is not the things that people conflate, it's the labels. So there's nothing to reconcile.

The Bank of England as an independent thing, exists; the Central Bank is a Relative thing. The Bank of England as a macro prudential regulator would also be a relative thing. MB resists the idea that discretion has anything to do with having a choice abuot what it does. Relative is always relative to some context, whether or not there is a choice about doing that thing. Optionality does not influence meaning. Independent: has monadic property P(x). Relative thing has dyadic property R(x,y). Mediating Thing has triadic property M(x,y,z) per Sowa.

The hierarchy we seem to be interested in is the independent things anyway. However David wants the concept of the government as well, in order to create or use those entities. So we do need the relative things. However, most of what we seem to be interested in seems to be the independent things.

Jeff: what we are interested in is the different kinds of structures that can enter into contracts, further down in the ontology. What is the thing that puts in a lawsuit, what is the thing that incurs the debt. Inthe United Stated versus Jones, or in the State of California versus Jones, this is the sovereign. Meanwhile there are agents or organs of the government, that is authorized to take action or be sued on behalf of the United States, the State of California and so on. In the Fed, we have certain independent things which are set up to carry out those functions, and they also have a role for which they are set up, which is the same thing defined as a relative things. In its role it's the relative thing. As an independent thing it is set up to do those things. When an entity is set up only to do one thing, then it becomes a question of whether it's useful to set up both, however the 2 concepts still exist. So it's a modeling question of what to stand up, which depends on the use case.

Meanwhile a legal person set up to do a particular thing for the government of e.g. the State of California, may be a separate legal person, but the things it does and the debts it incur are on behalf of the State of California (the sovereign etc.) as a distinct legal person. The relative thing that is Government is the linkage between those. Meanwhile, look at the linkage between the sovereign and the sub divisions. The definitions still talk of the government of... The 'of' means it's a relative thing. At present the taxonomy has things whose definition is that of a relative thing, and taxonomic assertions that are those of independent kinds of legal entity.

How would Mike simplify this? 3 concepts: 2 of them Independent things which are also Legal Persons: 1 and 2: Sovereign (the United States, the State of California); and (2) the government agency or instrumentality a legal person created to do a job. And 3 the relative (functional) thing, simply "Government", which could probably just be one class called Government, which will be the thing that governs (1) and sets up lots of (2) in order to do that job.

Pete: please review the detailed examples that FBC has done for Federal Reserve Bank and other agencies. We should be able to frame all of these in terms of the 3 concepts above.

Action: MB to review the individual properties to make sure they have the right domains.

Next meeting: Sept 8 the week after Labor Day.12:28 PM:

Action items

David Newman David will find out whether the US concept of Statutory Corporation inherits all of the properties of the concept we have labeled Corporation. We know hat the BBC does not.
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Mike Bennett MB Add these to people;rdf in FIBO Foundations Unable to locate Jira server for this macro. It may be due to Application Link configuration. .