# A mandate that is public, and a record nobody owns.
> For institutions with a public mandate: a long, fragmented record across sites, names, languages and office-holders, and what this approach can and cannot do.
- Page: https://mohammedteto.com/audiences/institutions/
- Language: en — French version: https://mohammedteto.com/fr/organisations/
- Author: Mohammed Teto (https://mohammedteto.com/#person)
- Published: 2026-10-07
- Updated: 2026-10-04
An institution is described by its own many sites, by its predecessors, by the people who led it and by everyone it deals with. This page explains what is specific to that record and whether this approach suits it.
AI reputation work for an institution is the work of stating its mandate, its name, its structure and its current leadership accurately and consistently in the sources it controls, and of requesting corrections in the others. It fits public bodies, foundations, universities, associations and international organizations whose record is long and fragmented. It concerns the accuracy of the institutional record; it is not political communication, and it does not remove information that is true.
## Is this your situation?
- **The institution was renamed or restructured** Answers still use the former name, or describe the body it replaced.
- **Leadership changed** A previous head is given as the current one.
- **The mandate is misstated** The institution is credited with powers it does not have, or confused with a neighboring body.
- **Several sites, several versions** Departments, programs and regional offices each describe the institution differently.
- **Languages diverge** The description in one language is older or shorter than in another.
## What is specific to an institutional record
**It is long, and no one holds all of it.** Decades of reports, archived pages, former sites and press coverage remain available. An answer can also draw on a document from a previous mandate. The corresponding symptom is described in [inaccurate or outdated AI answers](https://mohammedteto.com/problems/inaccurate-ai-results/).
**Succession is part of the entity.** An institution has predecessors, successors, parent bodies and agencies. Unless those relationships are stated, with dates, a system may have little to tell it that two names designate the same body at different times, or two different bodies. See [confused with someone else](https://mohammedteto.com/problems/entity-confusion/).
**The office and the office-holder are distinct.** A director, a president or a commissioner holds a role for a period. Sources that describe the person while in office remain after they leave it, and the institution's own pages are sometimes the most reliable place where the current holder is stated.
**A governmental body has a type of its own in structured data.** Schema.org provides the type `GovernmentOrganization`, defined as "a governmental organization or agency" ([schema.org](https://schema.org/GovernmentOrganization)), alongside other subtypes of `Organization`. Declaring the type, the official name, earlier names and the parent body states the identity; it does not, by itself, change what other sources say.
**Each language version is a record of its own.** Where an institution publishes in more than one language, each version is a source in its own right. A fact updated in one and not in the other produces two records.
**Authority is assumed, and not always visible.** An institution is often the primary source on its own subject. If its documents are published only as scanned files, or behind forms and scripts, they may not be usable by the systems that would cite them. Access is covered engine by engine in [Platforms](https://mohammedteto.com/platforms/).
## Who holds which part of the record
| Part of the record | Who holds it | What the institution can do |
|---|---|---|
| Mandate, structure, leadership | The institution's own sites | Publish one reference version and align every site with it |
| Founding texts and official acts | Official publications | Link to them as the source of each fact |
| Earlier names and predecessor bodies | Archives, former sites | State the succession, with dates |
| Coverage of decisions and people | The press | Ask for a correction where a fact is wrong |
| Reference sources | Their editors | Propose changes openly, declaring the connection |
| Partners' and funders' descriptions | Those organizations | Supply a reference text |
## Where the approach fits, and where it does not
**It fits** an institution whose name, mandate, structure or leadership is misstated, and which can designate one owner for the record.
**It does not fit** a wish to change how the institution's decisions are judged. Criticism that is accurately reported is part of the record.
**It is not political communication.** The work does not promote a policy, a party or a candidate.
**It has to follow the institution's own rules**, including those that govern how it buys services and what it may publish. Those rules are applied by the institution.
**It needs governance to last.** Without a named owner and a procedure for updates, a corrected record drifts again at the next reorganization. See [who should own it](https://mohammedteto.com/corporate-ai-reputation/#governance).
## Related profiles
For the people who lead or govern the institution, read [executives and board members](https://mohammedteto.com/audiences/executives-board-members/). An endowment or an institutional investor will find its case closer to [investors and family offices](https://mohammedteto.com/audiences/investors-family-offices/). An institution that relies on outside counsel and advisers for its public statements may also read [professional-services firms](https://mohammedteto.com/audiences/professional-services/).
## How it starts
With a [private assessment](https://mohammedteto.com/private-assessment/), which records how the institution is described today, in English and in French where the institution publishes in both, and from which sources. The engagement is described in [reputation and authority for organizations](https://mohammedteto.com/organizations/) and follows [The Authority Architecture System](https://mohammedteto.com/method/), whose last layer is [Monitoring and Governance](https://mohammedteto.com/method/#monitoring-and-governance). Symptoms are indexed in [Problems](https://mohammedteto.com/problems/), and related analyses are collected in [Insights](https://mohammedteto.com/insights/).
## Frequently asked questions
### Why does an AI assistant use our former name?
Possibly because the sources that carry the former name are older and more numerous than those that carry the new one, and because nothing states that the two names designate the same body. Declaring the succession, with dates, on the institution's own pages gives other sources something to align with.
### Who inside an institution should own this?
One named function, with authority over every site that describes the institution. It can be communications or the secretariat, working with those who manage the sites and with the legal department.
### Is this political or electoral communication?
No. The work concerns facts about the institution: its name, mandate, structure and leadership. It does not promote policies, parties or candidates.
### Can criticism of the institution be removed from AI answers?
Not by this work. What is accurately reported remains part of the record. What can be corrected are factual errors, at their source, and gaps in what the institution itself publishes.
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