ACTIVITIES
There are thousands of specific tasks performed by public employees during the normal course of business to meet their agencies' core functions and responsibilities. While the overall function or context for every task varies from agency to agency and department to department, the actual activities are not necessarily different. Below is a list of common government activities.
Activities:
| Authorized Term | Definition | Code |
| Accounting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with collecting data, usually in monetary terms, about economic activity, processing those data, and reporting them for the use of interested decision-makers. Includes tasks associated with sending accounts to clients for goods or services. | 1002 |
| Acquiring | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with obtaining ownership of an asset through purchase or gift. | 1114 |
| Adjudicating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with hearing and settling claims or complaints by a judicial or administrative body. | 1108 |
| Administrating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with directing the business affairs and human and material resources of an organization, project, or enterprise, involving primarily the formulation of policy. | 1102 |
| Advising | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with giving advice or offering counsel or recommendations. | 1003 |
| Appointing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with naming to or placing in an office or position. | 1004 |
| Appraising | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with determining an item's market value, usefulness, or performance, as done by the estimate of an authorized person. | 1005 |
| Arbitrating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the settlement of disputes, especially between labor and management, by a neutral party authorized to appraise the facts and arguments and make a decision binding upon the disputants. Distinguished from "mediation" in which a neutral party proposes a solution but has no authority to make a binding decision. | 1097 |
| Authenticating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with determining the legitimacy of a document or other artifact, or validating a document, as done by an authorized person. | 1106 |
| Bidding | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with offers by intended purchasers to buy goods or services at a stated price, or offers by intended sellers to sell goods or services at a stated price. | 1009 |
| Budgeting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with planning, coordinating, and allocating financial resources and expenditures. | 1012 |
| Cataloging | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with systematically analyzing and describing items in a collection and arranging the information into a catalog. | 1014 |
| Certifying | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with officially attesting that something is valid or meets a standard, or, with regard to people, that a standard degree of qualification has been met. | 1107 |
| Classifying | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with arranging systematically in groups or categories according to established criteria. | 1016 |
| Condemning | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the condemnation of private property by a public authority for public use using the powers and legal procedures of eminent domain. | 1116 |
| Constructing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the combining of parts and materials to build a structure. | 1119 |
| Consulting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with providing of advice and sometimes other services by professionals in the field of their special expertise. | 1020 |
| Contracting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the entering of two or more legally competent parties into a binding agreement to do or not to do something, subject to specified terms and conditions. | 1126 |
| Convicting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with proving, finding, or judging a person guilty of an offense or crime. | 1021 |
| Counseling | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with providing professional assistance to people in making decisions and coping with adjustment problems. | 1025 |
| Designing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the drawing up plans or layouts for a structure or machine. Also see "Planning." | 1122 |
| Disciplining | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with applying corrective actions or imposing penalties for unsatisfactory or unprofessional performances. | 1075 |
| Employing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the ongoing activity of providing individuals with and paying them for work. For the action of engaging the services of a person or persons for wages or other payment, use "hiring." | 1032 |
| Enforcing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with ensuring compliance with laws or regulations. | 1033 |
| Engineering | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. | 1118 |
| Evaluating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with determining the significance, worth, or condition by careful appraisal or study. | 1098 |
| Exhibiting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with showing or presenting to public view. | 1037 |
| Filing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the depositing of records with a public official to be preserved as part of the official public record. | 1115 |
| Granting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with providing financial support to another person or organization for a specific purpose. | 1110 |
| Hiring | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with engaging the services of a person or persons for wages or other payment. For the ongoing activity of providing individuals with and paying them for work, use "employing." For the concept of the degree or extent of the provision or availability of paid work to the population, use "employment." | 1045 |
| Identifying | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with recognizing or establishing someone or something as being a particular person or thing. | 1099 |
| Inspecting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with examining or reviewing officially. | 1101 |
| Interviewing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with conducting an interpersonal exchange in order to obtain information from another for such purposes as for journalism, employment, publication, or research. | 1053 |
| Inventorying | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with listing items on hand. | 1054 |
| Investigating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with examining the particulars in an attempt to learn the facts about something hidden, unique, or complex. | 1100 |
| Leasing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with granting use or occupation of property under the terms of a contract. | 1127 |
| Legislating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with making or enacting legislation. | 1057 |
| Licensing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with granting authority to an individual or group to exercise a certain privilege that, without such authorization, would constitute an illegal act, a trespass, or a tort. | 1059 |
| Litigating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with taking legal action or carrying on an action by judicial process. | 1113 |
| Maintaining | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with keeping a structure, machine, process, and system in a condition of good repair or efficiency. | 1121 |
| Managing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with controlling the business affairs and human and material resources of an organization, project, or enterprise, involving primarily the application rather than the formulation of policy. | 1103 |
| Marketing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the transfer of title or possession of goods or the supplying of services from seller to buyer is effected, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling. | 1062 |
| Monitoring | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with observing and collecting information about something over time or distance for some specific purpose. | 1063 |
| Operating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with controlling the functioning of a structure, machine, process, and system. | 1120 |
| Permitting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with authorizing an individual or group to take some specific action. | 1104 |
| Planning | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with selecting short- and long-term objectives and the drawing up of tactical and strategic plans to achieve those objectives, especially in a formal project proposal or scheme. Includes project scoping. | 1067 |
| Probating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with establishing the authenticity or validity of a will. | 1070 |
| Promoting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with advancing someone to a higher level in rank, position, grade or job level, or honor. | 1072 |
| Prosecuting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the commencement and continuance of an action or judicial proceeding to its ultimate conclusion. | 1129 |
| Publishing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with issuing printed, taped, or otherwise reproduced records of knowledge in any medium for sale or distribution to the public. | 1074 |
| Purchasing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with obtaining something by the payment of money or its equivalent. | 1111 |
| Receipting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with acknowledging in writing the payment of a bill, or the delivery of money, articles, or goods. | 1076 |
| Recording | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with entering a transaction in a book of public records, notably instruments affecting the title to real property. | 1077 |
| Recruiting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with seeking out and enlisting people for an enterprise, usually for a stated period of time, on either a paid or volunteer basis. | 1078 |
| Registering | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with making a legal or official record or list of people or objects. | 1109 |
| Regulating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with controlling according to rules, laws, or requirements. | 1080 |
| Releasing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with discharging people from an institution, enterprise, or obligation. | 1081 |
| Reporting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with giving an account. In the context of journalism, gathering and writing, or narrating by phone or broadcast, news events for newspapers, radio, or television. | 1083 |
| Reviewing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with going over or examining critically or deliberately. | 1105 |
| Rulemaking | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with the process used to adopt, amend or appeal a procedure or rule pursuant to the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act . | 1128 |
| Scheduling | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with establishing appointed times for events or for the start and completion of projects or series of events. | 1085 |
| Selecting | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with choosing a project, program or object in preference to others. | 1125 |
| Sentencing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with condemning to penalty or punishment. | 1087 |
| Supervising | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with overseeing the business affairs and human and material resources of an organization, project, or enterprise, involving primarily oversight of how policy is applied. For activities involving primarily the formulation of policy, use "administrating." For activities involving the application policy, use "managing." | 1088 |
| Terminating | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with concluding or discontinuing an activity, program, or job position. | 1091 |
| Testing | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with examining and measuring critically the qualities or abilities of something or someone, often with reference to established standards. | 1092 |
| Training | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with directly instructing others in knowledge, attitudes, or skills, use "teaching." | 1093 |
| Zoning | This activity type is reserved for tasks associated with regulating land use for stated purposes. | 1095 |
SOMETHING MISSING? This page is updated nightly. Please contact Tanya Marshall at to discuss adding new activities to the Thesaurus.
To learn more about Managing Records, CONTACT:
- TANYA MARSHALL, Assistant State Archivist
- EMAIL:
- PHONE: 802-828-0405
This page was last updated on: 2007-10-05.
