An SDMX Agency is responsible for owning and maintaining metadata relevant to the agency itself and the community it supports. Examples include:

• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• International Monetary Fund, (IMF)
• International Labour Organization (ILO)

Each agency is registered in the SDMX Global Registry and uniquely identified by its Agency ID (e.g., OECD, IMF, ILO).

Top Level Agencies

Top-level agencies are those listed in the official SDMX Agency Scheme, which is hosted in the SDMX Global Registry. These agencies may author metadata for themselves, including their own Agency Scheme if they wish to define sub-agencies.

Top-level agencies can also register their web service locations in the SDMX Global Discovery Service, where they maintain their metadata.

Sub-Agencies

A top-level agency may define its own Agency Scheme. Such a scheme always consists of sub-agencies defined under the parent agency.

A sub-agency ID is formed by combining the parent agency’s ID, a period (.) separator, and the sub-agency’s ID, as shown below:

PARENT_AGENCY.SUB_AGENCY