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    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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