Functions of government (#cofog)


The Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) was developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and published by the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD).

It can be applied to government expense and the net acquisition of non-financial assets (outlays).

COFOG has three levels of detail: Divisions, Groups, and Classes.

The divisions could be seen as the broad objectives of government, while the groups and classes detail the means by which these broad objectives are achieved.

The initials “CS” or “IS” follow the title of each class in parentheses to indicate whether the services produced by general government units and included in this class are collective or individual services, and thus whether individual and collective final consumption expenditure should be recorded in respective functions.

With the support of Wikinetix a #pdf2wiki conversion was performed during the past years. For the wiki-version some usability improvements were added:


The English wiki version of the classification with #tagcoding hashtags can be accessed here: #cofog hashtags.

A translation into additional languages is most desirable, for instances as part of a #digicoop1b - Platform for sharing digital public goods.


A #COFOG hashtag can be combined with a country code or a local government unit code (#WWlgu), for instance as illustrated at #tagcoding pivots which are also available in different languages.


The backlinks below usually do not include the child and sibling items, nor the pages in the breadcrumbs.


#tagcoding tags for goods, services and bads