How to publish ministerial overseas travel and meetings
Source: gov.uk (2025-02-10)

Template for GOV.UK publication page for departmental core transparency data, to be published quarterly.

Prepare the data

The Cabinet Office Transparency Data team has provided this guidance on how to prepare data for publication.

Ministers’ overseas travel and meetings: Publication Guidance (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministers-overseas-travel-and-meetings-publication-guidance)

They will commission you with templates, timing and support on appropriate approval processes.

This guidance will apply to transparency data for the period of October - December 2024 onwards.

Government is committed to publishing this data every quarter.

Publish the data

Create a new GOV.UK publication page for each data release.

Create a collection page on GOV.UK for all data releases, with links to each individual publication page.

Consider creating a www.data.gov.uk (http://www.data.gov.uk/) collection page for each individual data set

Publication page template

The publication title, summary, detail and file name is a government standard and must not be changed.

Publication type: Transparency data

Title: [Department name]: ministerial overseas travel and meetings, [month to month] [year] Example Title: “Cabinet Office: ministerial overseas travel and meetings, October to December 2024”

Summary: Data on ministers’ overseas travel and meetings with external individuals and organisations.

Body:

[Department] publishes details of ministers’ gifts overseas travel and meetings with external individuals and organisations every quarter.

Associations

Policies: Government transparency and accountability

Policy areas: Government efficiency, transparency and accountability

CSV attachment titles
- [Department]’s ministerial overseas travel, [month to month] [year]
- [Department]’s ministerial meetings [month to month] [year]
For example:
- Cabinet Office ministerial overseas travel January to March 2025
- Cabinet Office ministerial meetings January to March 2025
Collection page [GOV.UK]

Add the new publication to your department’s collection page for this data.

Make sure the collection page is tagged to the Government transparency and accountability (https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/government-transparency-and-accountability) policy.

Collection page template [GOV.UK]

Title: [Department]: ministerial overseas travel, and meetings

Summary: All data on overseas travel undertaken by ministers and meetings with external individuals and organisations.

Body (optional):

Government publishes details of ministers’ overseas travel and meetings with external individuals and organisations every quarter.

Subheadings: Add headings for each calendar year, most recent first.

DATA.GOV.UK page templates

When the dataset is published, add a link to it in your department’s section on data.gov.uk.

We recommend that this is maintained as a series of collection pages listing all historic publications on GOV.UK with a direct link to the .CSV resource. An individual page will need to be maintained for each of the following:
- Overseas Travel
- Meetings
Title: [Department]: Ministerial [the specific data set] data Example:
- Cabinet Office Ministerial Overseas Travel Data
- Cabinet Office Ministerial Meetings Data
Summary: This is a collection and collation page for an element of [your department] Ministerial Transparency publications [published here: {your ministerial transparency pages on gov.uk}.]

Guidance - Each CSV published on GOV.UK will be listed here, to enable easy access to a single stream of data on Ministers. Please use the naming conventions present on www.gov.uk (http://www.gov.uk/) to ensure data is accurately described and dated to specific period and year.

Historical Data

Where possible - review historical datasets on www.gov.uk (http://www.gov.uk/) and convert these to CSV format for ease of use within both www.gov.uk (http://www.gov.uk/) and for referencing within www.data.gov.uk (http://www.data.gov.uk/). Do not ever archive or remove historical publications from www.gov.uk (http://www.gov.uk/)