About PolSys
NSD's primary task is to secure easy access to data for the research community. To achieve this task documentation of databases and datasets is important. PolSys is one of NSD's four main data holdings.
Data on the Political System (PolSys) contains information about institutions, persons and resources in (mainly) the Norwegian political and civil service area. The web pages describe how documentation on PolSys is organized. The web pages also contain completed tables and overview of data from basic data.
The main unit in the documentation concept is archive or database.
The oldest archive, Archive of Politicians, contains information about education, occupation, political career etc for politicians from 1814 until present. The main purpose for the first archives prepared was to cover the research communities' need for statistical information.
The unit in focus determines the constitution of an archive, e g politicians. Different topics about the unit in focus are collected; for politicians information about education, occupation etc is collected. These topics are organised in different datasets. All archives are listed on PolSys’s homepage with a short documentation of the content.
The archives are grouped into the following type of institutions: Parliament, Government, Parties, Civil Service, Organizations and Other Archives. A consequence of archive as a main unit in the documentation is the possibility to make other categories, e g categories focusing on persons or resources.