Competent Authority

A beschikking is only binding when the right body issues it. The tax inspector (inspecteur) assesses income. The CIZ decides on a long-term care indication. A municipal college grants social assistance. An article records which body is competent in competent_authority, the bevoegd gezag.

The engine uses this field for two things. It tells a binding decision apart from a calculation that anyone may run (see Multi-Org Execution). It also derives from it who may annotate a law with authority (see Notes and Annotations).

The two forms

competent_authority sits in an article’s machine_readable section and takes one of two shapes.

A named authority, when the body is fixed:

type is either INSTANCE or CATEGORY, defaulting to INSTANCE:

• INSTANCE is one specific organization, named outright. Belastingdienst, CIZ, Minister van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport.
• CATEGORY is a kind of authority. Which body is meant depends on the context. “College van burgemeester en wethouders” names a kind of authority, and which municipal college is meant depends on the municipality in scope.

With INSTANCE the article alone settles the authority. With CATEGORY the engine still needs a fact from the context to find the body.

A reference to a computed output, when the authority itself depends on the case:

The # form points at an output that the same law computes elsewhere. The Wet langdurige zorg uses this. In that law, which body is competent (2_1_3_bevoegd_gezag) is itself a rule. So the article refers to that output instead of naming a body.

On an article, the field names who decides. That is always one authority, in either form.

Who answers an open term

Since schema v0.8.8, an open term and a required fact (requires with fact) can each have a competent_authority of their own. It takes the named form, or a list of named authorities. On an open term it says who may answer the term. On a fact it says who establishes the fact. An article with several open terms can name different authorities for each.

BABW art. 49 lets the college issue a disabled parking card under lid 1 and 2, and lets the CBR issue one under lid 3. So any college, or the CBR, may answer whether an applicant had a card before:

A cell is an organization that keeps its own chronicle and answers questions from it. A cell’s answer reaches a term like this one through the policy of the deciding authority. That policy binds the term to the answer (source.reduction, RFC-048).

Wherever that binding runs, the engine asks the one cell in the call that the term names. It does not ask a cell that the term does not name. If the call holds more than one cell that the term names, the decision fails. The engine merges no answers, and which cell of a category answers is an open question. For a term without competent_authority, the engine asks the cell of the authority that holds the policy. The article’s own competent_authority plays no part in which cell the engine asks.

Who gives a finding

A finding is what the authority itself decides on an open norm in a single case. An open term with decided_per_case_by needs a finding when no regulation fills it. The field also names the authority in words. The engine reads it only as a marker that the term is judged case by case. Who gives the finding follows from competence:

1. The authority that the term names in its own competent_authority.
2. If the term names none, the authority that carries out the article. That is the article’s competent_authority, or else the holder named at the root of the rulework.

If neither names an authority, whoever carries out the article gives the finding.

Art. 13a of the Leerplichtwet 1969 says that the head of the school grants the leave. So the head gives the findings on the open terms of art. 13a.

The fictitious policy of Wilgendaal lets the college judge four medical criteria when there is no advice, for instance because it left out the examination. No law makes the GGD the judge of those criteria, and the terms name no authority. So the college gives those findings, as the holder of the policy.

A cell gives findings only on the terms it answers. It refuses a finding on a term that another authority answers. RFC-048 §2 sets out the rule.

One law, several authorities

A single law can name a different authority per article, because different articles describe different acts. In the Wet langdurige zorg the CIZ takes the indication decision, while later articles give other steps to the Zorgkantoor (3.3.3, 4.2.4). Each article that grants a power has its own competent_authority.

Some articles grant no power. An article that establishes a body (Wlz 6.1.1 for the CAK, 7.1.1 for the CIZ) or imposes a duty (the zorgplicht of 4.2.1) carries no competent authority of its own. The authority belongs to the act that the article describes. A law as a whole has no single competent authority. A policy can have one, as the next section shows.

The holder of a policy

Since schema v0.8.9, a rulework can have competent_authority at its root. It applies to every article that names no authority of its own. On a policy (UITVOERINGSBELEID) it names the holder: the authority whose rulework it is.

A policy that binds an open term to a cell’s answer must name its holder this way, by name. The loader refuses a # reference or a list there. A reduction names no holder. Since schema v0.8.12 it sits with its cell (cells/<cell>/reductions/ of the corpus), and a cell answers only from the reductions it keeps.

Further reading

• Multi-Org Execution - how the competent authority decides execute-vs-accept
• Notes and Annotations - how note authority is derived from the competent authority
• RFC-002: Bevoegdheid - full specification
• RFC-051: Facts and Competence - competence on an open term and a fact
• RFC-048: Reduction and Synthesis - binding a cell’s answer, and asking the competent cell for it
• Rules as Executed, section 4.3 - the position paper on which authority chooses and publishes an encoding
• Rules as Executed, section 4.6 - the position paper on overrides and discretion