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Section 4 of 8

How records reach the Office

Every inbound record — a contract, a payment, a project, a company's ownership — reaches the Office one of three ways, and is checked the same way whichever it was.

Three routes, one path A live interface, a controlled file drop and hand entry by an officer all pass through the same envelope check, parser, idempotent upsert and batch record. where there is an API where there is not where there is neither Live interfaceThe connector reads the source on ascheduleAssurance: from the source system Controlled file dropThe institution sends an extract;an officer loads itAssurance: from a controlled file Entered by an officerTyped from a letter, schedule orstatementAssurance: attested by an officer One pathEnvelope check, parser,idempotent upsert, batch record —and provenance against everyrecordSame checks whichever lane it camedown
Three routes, one path

A contract value typed from an award letter is validated exactly as hard as one that arrived over a connection. If the figure is not an amount, it is held back; if the project is not on the register, it is held back; if a payment exceeds its commitment, it is held back. Typing it does not make it true.

What differs between the three

One line against the record. It names which system the record is about, which route it came down, and — for anything that did not come from an interface — the officer who entered it and what they were reading from. That line appears wherever the figure appears, so a reviewer weighing a price against a benchmark can see whether they are looking at something GHANEPS said or something a colleague attested to. Both are usable. The difference matters when two figures disagree, or when somebody asks a year later how the Office knew.

The three routes compared
RouteWhat it needsWhat the record carries
Live interfaceAn agreed interface and a credentialSource, extraction time, schema version
Controlled file dropAn extract the institution agrees to sendThe above, plus the officer who loaded it and what the file was
Entered by an officerA letter, schedule or statementThe above, plus the officer’s name and the document reference