What to tag offices of professional associations / regulatory organizations?

There are two types of organizations that I am looking at. Both are non-government.

1 Organizations that regulate the conduct of those practicing a profession, eg. dentists, doctors, engineers. These organizations are usually created by legislation, have some legal authority, and membership is mandatory. An example: College of Dental Surgeons of Alberta

2 Organizations created by practioners of a profession to act as an advocate for the profession and public policy, to facilitate communication and learning among its members, and often to act as the friendly public face of the profession. Membership is not mandatory and, crucially, they are not unions. An example: Alberta Dental Association

Sometimes 1 will also do some of the same things as 2.

My gut says 2 should be office=association but that raises the question of what value to use for the association key, especially to disambiguate 1 and 2 (association=professional?)

As I read them, office=foundation and office=gongo do not fit (not involved with disbursing grants, etc., and not controlled by the government, respectively).

What might be appropriate, but are problematic in their vagueness, are office=chamber (I’m leaning towards this for 1), office=ngo, and office=quango.

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not sure if I see the point of “quango” and “gongo” in OSM. Presumably offices of either look the same, at least if they are active in the same field.

I think this is an admirable effort, but making a distinction between the tagging of voluntary professional associations and mandatory professional regulatory bodies is going to be extremely difficult and, in my opinion, probably not worth the effort.

To me there are chiefly two obstacles to a consistent, unified tagging scheme for this: 1) differences in terminology from jurisdiction to jurisdiction are contradictory and confusing, making it difficult for anybody outside of the professions to distinguish them, and 2) in some jurisdictions, in some professions, there are no real distinctions between the regulatory and advocacy associations anyway (which you’ve already pointed out with the remark “Sometimes 1 will also do some of the same things as 2”; e.g. the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) is a mandatory professional regulatory body created by legislation, but it also acts at the profession’s advocacy group). I also suspect—but admittedly have not verified—that there are places around the world where membership in the advocacy organizations is mandatory (making them more akin to a union), and places where membership in the regulatory body is optional, blurring the lines of how to distinguish them.

To illustrate the first obstacle let me use lawyers as an example. Sticking with Alberta, the professional regulator for lawyers is the Law Society of Alberta, while there are several professional advocacy associations in the province; the largest of these is the Alberta Branch of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA–Alberta), but there are also smaller associations such as the Calgary Bar Association.

Generally in most of Canada we call the regulatory bodies “law societies”, but there are exceptions: in Nova Scotia it’s called the Barristers’ Society, and in Quebec it’s the Bar of Quebec (Barreau de Québec). The advocacy organization in Quebec is l’Association du Barreau canadien–Québec (“Canadian Bar Association–Quebec”). Again, just to be clear: the regulator in Quebec is le Barreau, while the advocacy group is l’Association du Barreau. :neutral_face:

In neighbouring New York the advocacy group is called the New York State Bar Association. However, the “state bar”—the regulatory body in New York—is an office of the judiciary itself, not a separate self-governing professional body. Lawyers in New York must register directly with the courts system to practice. (Disciplinary actions are carried out by the Office of Court Administration.)

This stands in stark contrast to many other US states where the “bar association” is both the regulator AND the advocacy organization (like the example of APEGA above). They are thus said to be “unified”. This is similar to how it works in England and Wales, where the General Council of the Bar works as both advocacy group and regulator; the regulatory functions are carried out by the semi-independent Bar Standards Board. However, membership in the Bar Council is not mandatory, whereas American “unified” state bar associations are mandatory. The Bar Council is also only for barristers; the UK still separates barristers and solicitors into distinct professions. The equivalent for solicitors is the Law Society, and the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA); again, membership in the Law Society is not mandatory, but solicitors’ practice is regulated by the SRA regardless of membership in the Law Society.

Again I would submit that these distinctions are not very important to laymen looking for an office location on a map, and I don’t think we can fully convey the subtle differences in whether the regulatory bodies and advocacy organizations are separate or combined, mandatory or voluntary, self-governing or an agency of the government, etc.

office=association, association=professional seems perfectly reasonable for both advocacy organizations and regulatory bodies, except perhaps if the regulatory body is an office of the government itself. In that case I’d go for a combo of office=government and government=regulator or something like that.

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Sounds good to me, thanks for the advice.

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association= and government= are currently more used for the domain, ie eg =lawyer and =law would be more expected, cf the few union= for office=union compared conceptually. Relegating to professional=lawyer would seem too deeply nested, and not very matching semantically. Advocacy vs Regulating is an orthogonal role, another aspect. So on the contrary, association=lawyer + professional= / professionals= (plural emphasizing the people over the adjective) =advocacy;regulatory feels better in describing their industry and “professional capacity”.
For =regulator , the word has common meaning in finance for market regulation, broader than professionals. Other government= can be expected to have regulatory function. Eg while =finance has many =treasury mistakes , and other financial schemes, it has been used on some central banks, including a few US Federal Reserve. Searching for SEC in other countries (US one no government= ) has =securities* , =commerce , etc.

You do you, boo.

Slight problem: professional(s)= would be a new key.

profession= exists, but is only used a handful of times and most of them questionable (eg. a bicycle repair shop that has service:bicycle:repair=yes also has profession=bicycle repair). There is one use that seems relevant: office=chamber with profession=engineering. The website is in Bulgarian so I’m not sure on this, but it kind of looks like APEGA.

profession= would be the domain, which is expected in the 11 chamber | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo
Including 1 =engineers and =lawyers respectively. My question about =chamber is the word usually referring to a Chamber of Commerce, which is basically the same as the a “business association”. (4 association=business btw)
If you want something used, association= has 4 =lawyers , and 2 =lawyer
professionals= is additional to this. It can be ignored first.