Civic Exchange Protocol (CEP)

Interoperable data standards for describing entities, relationships, and value exchanges across civic systems.

Overview

The Civic Exchange Protocol defines a coherent, verifiable way to describe:

• Entities (organizations, agencies, districts, people)
• Relationships (grant awards, contracts, reporting relationships)
• Exchanges of value (payments, disbursements, transfers)

CEP records are:

• JSON Schema–validated
• Fully typed
• Deterministic and versioned
• Extensible across jurisdictions and data ecosystems
• Designed for cross-system interoperability

Documentation: https://civic-interconnect.github.io/civic-exchange-protocol/

Repository Structure

/
├── schemas/                    # Official CEP JSON Schemas
│   ├── cep.entity.schema.json
│   ├── cep.relationship.schema.json
│   ├── cep.exchange.schema.json
│   └── cep.entity.identifier-scheme.schema.json
│
├── vocabulary/                 # Versioned controlled vocabularies
│   ├── entity-type.v1.0.0.json
│   ├── exchange-type.v1.0.0.json
│   ├── exchange-role.v1.0.0.json
│   ├── party-role.v1.0.0.json
│   ├── value-type.v1.0.0.json
│   └── resolution-method.v1.0.0.json
│
├── src/python/                 # Python reference implementation
│   ├── src/civic_exchange_protocol/
│   └── tests/
│
├── src/rust/                   # Rust reference implementation
│   ├── cep-core/
│   ├── cep-entity/
│   ├── cep-exchange/
│   └── cep-relationship/
│
├── docs/                       # MkDocs documentation site
└── .github/workflows/          # CI, Docs deploy, PyPI release

Python Reference Implementation

Install from PyPI:

pip install civic-exchange-protocol

CLI entrypoint:

cx --help
cx validate-json examples/entity/school_district_01.json --schema entity
cx validate-json examples/entity --schema entity
cx validate-json examples/exchange --schema exchange --recursive

Includes:

• Pydantic models for Entity / Relationship / Exchange
• Deterministic record hashing
• Attestation helpers
• Built-in JSON Schema validator
• Test vectors for conformance

---

Rust Reference Implementation

The repository includes a Rust workspace with:

• cep-core
• cep-entity
• cep-exchange
• cep-relationship

To build:

cd src/rust
cargo build

Each crate inherits version, license, and repository metadata from the workspace root.

Schemas

Official schemas live under /schemas and are published with stable URLs such as:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/civic-interconnect/civic-exchange-protocol/main/schemas/cep.entity.schema.json

Documentation includes a browser-embedded validator using Ajv.

Security Policy

We support responsible disclosure through GitHub’s Private Vulnerability Report feature.

See: SECURITY.md

Contributing

• See CONTRIBUTING.md
• See DEVELOPER.md