SOP-15 — Government Forms Register, Procedures and Record History

Owner: Owner-operator (Document Owner and Records Owner for every SOP; no delegate exists). Version 2026-10-09 · effective 2026-10-08 · reviewed every 180 days · last reviewed 2026-10-09 · next review due 2027-04-07.

Purpose

Keep the register of government forms, the procedure steps printed with each form, the upstream rule text and downstream finding counts, the Coverage Ledger and the Record History factual, cited, dated and free of advice, grades or trends — so a filer can see which of their own lines a dated receipt supports and where the official record lives, while this platform stays the dated reader and never the author or judge.

Scope

/forms, /forms/{id}, /forms/{id}/procedure, /forms/{id}/rule, /forms/finder, /forms/findings, /forms/states, /government-desk, /record-history; GET /api/batch/{id}/coverage; the forms_named field on registry rows; the form-line block on receipts (SOP-02) and the form citation in letters (SOP-13).

Procedure

A form enters the register only with: the agency's form number or regulation line as published; the official page (or, where no direct link is held, the agency index and the words 'we hold no direct link'); the exact line a receipt supports; the citation; what the receipt supports and what it does not prove; the finding pattern it answers; the receipt columns it draws on. Forms that have no public record behind them are listed under 'not served' with the reason.
Procedure steps are written from the regulation: each step carries the actor the rule names, the trigger, the record the rule requires, the retention period and the citation. The auditor's test is cited to the OMB Compliance Supplement, the FAR/DFARS, the agency's review rule or the program's audit protocol. Steps where a dated receipt is the record are marked. No step may say what a filer 'should' do beyond what the rule says; no step may rate the filer.
Upstream: each form's cited sections are read from the eCFR versioner API as served (text, amendment dates, SHA-256 of the XML), with the eCFR's own status printed (editorial compilation; annual CFR is official). Federal Register documents naming the form number are listed as indexed, with the note that only Paperwork Reduction Act notices carry the OMB control number and revision. These are reads of the rule, not of any party; the SOP-03 source freeze (party lookups) does not apply, and they are cached 7 days / 24 hours.
Downstream: FAC finding counts by compliance type and audit year are printed nationwide as the number of finding rows FAC returns; a cell FAC did not answer prints null, never zero. Counts are never attributed to a named party except where the party's own report id is cited.
OMB control numbers are printed only where held as read from the form; otherwise the page says to read it from the form footer or the PRA notice.
Coverage Ledger (partner key only): rows with a dated record, rows with no record held, rows whose record printed a silent source, first and last read — laid against the receipt steps of the forms named. No percentage, grade, rank or trend word appears. 'No record held' means this roster holds none, not that no check was made elsewhere.
Record History: each source's rows grouped by the year the source prints; a year with nothing printed is stated as such and never called clean; same-name rows are candidates; sources that did not answer are marked and not counted as zero. No comparison between parties is produced.
Government Desk lists official systems with the agency's published public help desk (URL, and phone or email only where read from the agency page on the date noted). Registrant contacts, complaint, fraud, ethics or program-integrity channels are never listed as help routes.
Re-check: every 180 days, and whenever a Federal Register PRA notice for a listed form appears, the form's official page, number, OMB control and line are re-read; renumbering is recorded in this SOP's change log and the form page shows the prior number.
forms_named is stored on every registry row (SOP-02) and summarised publicly as 'named on N receipts' and in Road Watch; it is a count of requester choices, not of compliance.
Any text on these pages that a reader could take as a determination about a party, a legal conclusion or advice is a nonconformity handled under SOP-06.

Records this procedure produces — and who keeps them current

Record	Where	Updated by	Update trigger	Retention	Public
Forms register, procedures, finder, desk	`code: backend/formsregister.py, formprocedures.py, govdesk.py`	owner via release (SOP-09)	on change	indefinite (git)	True
Rule-as-printed and FR cache	`db.rule_cache`	system	per read	7 days / 24 h, then re-read	False
FAC finding counts	`db.rule_cache (fac_counts)`	system	daily	24 h	True
Coverage Ledger response	`computed from db.batch_rows`	partner key holder	per request	not stored	False
Record History response	`computed per request from source modules and caches`	public	per request	not stored	True
forms_named on registry rows	`db.receipt_registry.forms_named`	system at record time	every receipt	indefinite	True

Evidence

/api/public-record/forms · /api/public-record/forms/procedures · /api/public-record/forms/hud-2992/rule · /api/public-record/forms/findings/counts · /api/public-record/government-desk · /api/public-record/history?name=UPMC

Change log

Date	Change
2026-10-08	First issue. Owner: 'make it so easy for people to deal with the government when they deal with us … remain neutral.' Written after the register (25 forms), procedures (11 families), finder, Coverage Ledger, Record History, rule-as-printed (eCFR), Federal Register form-number index, FAC finding counts and Government Desk went live.
2026-10-08	Owner reviewed an outside strategy memo; adopted in-box items only: /clause cross-link on S&D form lines, free cite/embed snippet per form (/forms/{id}/cite), the agency's own instructions linked (never paraphrased), SF-330 / DD-254 / W-9 added to 'not served' with official links. Declined: plain-language paraphrase of form questions (authorship), machine translation of regulation text (as-printed would no longer be true), forms with no public record behind them.
2026-10-08	Sector Maps added (/maps, /api/public-record/maps/{id} and /html): form-to-duty reference documents for named situations (PA hospital, PA FQHC, PA county pass-through, PA federal-aid prime, transit agency, Medicaid MCO, federal prime, OH hospital), composed from the register, procedures, Duty Sheets, source table and state register; dated and hashed; they state that whether a line applies is decided by the organisation's awards, contracts and agencies. SOP-13 letters may point to the recipient's map.
2026-10-08	Owner: mention forms and 'the dialect that goes with it' on the describing pages. The dialect (/dialect, /api/public-record/glossary) added: 28 government terms summarised and pointed at the defining section via rule-as-printed (the section controls), 8 of our own terms marked 'ours'. One cited forms-layer paragraph added to /press, /methodology and /for-counsel.
2026-10-09	Owner: 'have we addressed all the government forms we can document?' → register grew 25→33 served, 8→12 not-served. Added where an official public record stands behind the line: 2 CFR 200.332 subrecipient monitoring (FAC+SAM), CMS-855 ownership/managing-employee screen (LEIE+SAM+state), OSHA 300A (ITA data + inspection record, Record History only), FAR 52.209-5/-11 offeror certifications (SAM+FAPIIS), FAR 52.222-50 / 2 CFR 175 trafficking clause (SAM+CSL), DOT DBE UCP directory (public state directories; PA), IRS 990 / TEOS (Record History), PA COSTARS contract in force (62 Pa.C.S. 1902; directory read pending and said so). Declined and listed: I-9/E-Verify, WH-347 payroll accuracy, non-PA licenses, FOCI self-representations. New procedure families: osha_recordkeeping, trafficking, dbe, irs_teos, coop_purchasing.
2026-10-09	Owner: 'press' the Pennsylvania path. COSTARS public supplier search publishes robots.txt 'Disallow: /' → the automated directory read is NOT built (SOP-04: a refused read is printed as 'not read' with the official link, never as 'no row'); register and procedure text corrected from 'being wired' to 'refuses automated reads'. DGS Guide to COSTARS Contracts (12-24) read: COSTARS-6 Software excludes hosted solutions → hosted services sit on the IT Services ITQ (ITQ-26/-27/-28) with a COSTARS election; that reading is printed as DGS's text, and a supplier-category question was sent to the published COSTARS mailbox under SOP-13 (one message, no follow-up).
2026-10-09	Operating template GOV-01 (suspension-and-debarment purchase file for local governments, authorities and school districts; PA cooperative purchases) issued 2026-10-09 at /protocols, cross-filed to two-cfr-180-300 and costars-contract; it carries a pilot kit (CSV columns incl. forms, where to send, what comes back). Written from FAC findings Cranberry Township 2025-002 and City of Lancaster 2024-001.

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