OPDA Knowledge base
Concept tier claim

Electronic Record Evidence

opda:ElectronicRecordEvidence

Electronic Record Evidence

An Electronic Record Evidence is a structured record retrieved by API from an authoritative source — for example, a tax record from HMRC’s API or a registration record from Companies House.

Why it matters

API-retrieved records carry a different verification mechanic than paper documents: they are typically real-time (retrieved at the moment of verification), they carry cryptographic-grade transport security, and they may be re-fetched to confirm continued validity. OPDA gives Electronic Record Evidence its own Evidence subtype so its API-endpoint, retrieval timestamp, and authority-attestation can be modelled as first-class facets.

If you are integrating with HMRC, Companies House, HMLR data APIs, or similar authoritative sources, this is the Evidence subtype your records become.

Hard cases

  • API response cached vs live. A cached response from yesterday is not a live retrieval — the IC discriminates by retrieval timestamp and refresh-policy.
  • Authority record updated after retrieval. The Electronic Record at retrieval time and the same Electronic Record now may differ. The Evidence record is the retrieval snapshot; a fresh retrieval is a fresh Evidence record.
  • API endpoint deprecated. The authority retires the endpoint. Past Evidence records persist as retrieval snapshots; future verifications cannot use the deprecated endpoint.

Identity Criterion

An Electronic Record Evidence record is identified by its (API endpoint URL, retrieval timestamp, record-id) triple — endpoint + when + what. Two records refer to the same Evidence only if all three coincide. See the Logical tier → for the typed structure.

  • Evidence — Electronic Record Evidence is one of three Evidence subtypes
  • Electronic Record — short-name alias used by worked examples
  • Claim — Claims supported by Electronic Record Evidence
  • Verification Activity — verifies a Claim using Electronic Record Evidence
%%{init: {"theme": "base"}}%% flowchart LR accTitle: Electronic Record Evidence related-Kinds neighbourhood graph accDescr: Electronic Record Evidence as one of three Evidence subtypes, with short-name alias Electronic Record; identified by (API endpoint, retrieval timestamp, record-id); each retrieval is its own evidence snapshot. classDef centre fill:#E1BEE7,stroke:#6A1B9A,stroke-width:3px,color:#4A148C classDef cls fill:#B3E5FC,stroke:#0277BD,stroke-width:2px,color:#01579B classDef alias fill:#FFF9C4,stroke:#F57F17,stroke-width:2px,color:#E65100 ERecEv["ElectronicRecordEvidence"]:::centre Evidence["Evidence
(supertype)"]:::cls ERec["ElectronicRecord
(alias)"]:::alias Claim["Claim"]:::cls Verification["VerificationActivity"]:::cls ERecEv -.->|"isA"| Evidence ERecEv ===|"owl:equivalentClass"| ERec Claim -->|"supportedBy"| ERecEv Verification -->|"uses"| ERecEv

Source ODR

ODR-0009 — Claims, evidence, provenance §Q1

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