Conducting legal research to determine whether an organization should be classified as a government, and confirming the continued existence of governments, their administrative structure, and their activities; ultimately, counting the number of governments by type of government.

Obtaining the number of people employed by governments, by full-time and part-time status, and the payroll amounts.

The Finance Component, with the most up to date data on revenues, expenditures, assets, debt, and pensions, was released on December 16, 2014.