Global Ocean Accounts Partnership Secretariat · GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting · circular

Structure and Focus of the Technical Guidance

Responsible officer: Dr Jordan GacutanDrafting: AI-assisted drafting from GOAP Secretariat source materials; source list to be published at the close of consultation.

GOAP Technical Guidance

Version 0.10.1 · 1 September 2026Draft for consultation — not final guidance and not to be cited as adopted
CC BY-NC 4.0

After reading this Circular, you will understand how the Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting is organised, the meta-structure each circular follows, the conventions for versioning, stability classification, and dependency tracking, and the production process for circulars. This Circular is a reference for authors, editors, and users of the Technical Guidance.

None.

Note

Framework Position

This Circular is a meta-circular: it describes how the Technical Guidance itself is organised rather than providing substantive ocean accounting methodology.

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3. Organisation of the Technical Guidance

The Technical Guidance is organised into seven sections:

Each circular is identified by: TG-[Section].[Number]

TG-0.1: Section 0, Circular 1
TG-6.14: Section 6, Circular 14 (Marine and Coastal Tourism Accounting)

The number .0 is reserved for a section-framing circular: one that establishes the vocabulary and the routing the rest of its section depends on, and that carries no method of its own. Section 1 has one, TG-1.0, because the terminology of ocean economy measurement is used by the other twelve circulars in that section. Sections without such a circular begin at .1, and a .0 is not to be created to complete a pattern.

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The version number is recorded in the circular’s YAML frontmatter as a separate version field (e.g., version: "0.2.0"). Major increments reflect substantive content changes, whilst minor increments reflect editorial improvements.

3.3 Stability Classification (Badges)

Each circular carries a stability badge indicating its relationship to underlying standards. See TG-0.5 Navigating the Technical Guidance for full definitions. Summary:

All circulars follow a standard structure to ensure consistency for readers. This section specifies the template for circular authors.

4.1 YAML Frontmatter Specification

Every circular begins with machine-readable YAML frontmatter:

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Editorial fields only. The block above is what a circular author writes. Each page also carries platform frontmatter — project, visibility, status, content_type, brand, sidebar_category and sidebar.order — which the /new-page skill sets and authors do not hand-edit.

status and circular_status are different fields. status is the platform publish gate (working or published) and governs whether a page is built at all. circular_status is the editorial state (Draft, Completed, Planned) shown in the metadata table. A page can be status: published and circular_status: Draft at the same time — that is the normal state for a circular out for consultation.

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Note on badge: See Section 3.3 for stability classification definitions. Note on publication version: The version field reflects the public publication version, not the internal pipeline draft count. Pipeline drafts (e.g., draft-v4, draft-v6) are production artefacts only, and the publication version is confirmed by the Secretariat before a circular moves to Completed status.

4.2 Metadata Display Block

The site renders a metadata table automatically from YAML frontmatter (circular_id, version, badge, circular_status, last_updated). Authors do not hand-write the display block in the markdown body.

Required frontmatter fields for the metadata table:

Note on Last Updated: Manually maintained by the author at publication time.

4.3 Standard Section Structure

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Standard Circular Template (Sections 1—4, 6)

Note on numbering: Acknowledgements is always second-to-last and References always last, numbered consecutively after whatever Guidance content is present. An optional “Limitations and Considerations” section may appear between Guidance Material and Acknowledgements, in which case it becomes Section 4, whilst Acknowledgements and References shift to Sections 5 and 6 respectively.

Case Study Template (Section 5)

Section 5 circulars use an adapted structure for country/regional case studies:

Note: This template has not yet been validated against compiled Section 5 drafts. Authors should cross-check against TG-5.x working drafts when available.

Front Matter Template (Section 0)

Section 0 circulars have unique structures appropriate to their purpose:

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0.1 General Introduction: Extended conceptual content with figures
0.5 Navigating: Primarily visual/tabular (dependency graphs, pathways)
0.6 Glossary: Definition list format organised alphabetically
0.7 QA Principles: Reference document format with standards citations

Any Section 0 circular not listed above follows the Standard Circular Template.

4.4 Section Content Guidelines

4.5 Section Scope Tests

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Each section’s scope is stated in Section 3.1. The tests below say what that scope means when an author is deciding whether a passage belongs in the circular they are writing. They were derived from the Section 1 review of September 2026 and the Section 3 review that followed it, both of which found method distributed across sections that had no rule to test it against.

Two consequences are worth stating explicitly, because both have been breached in practice:

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A Section 4 worked example may show a variable being produced and quality-assured; it should not show an account being balanced. Balancing an account is Section 3 work, and so is the valuation choice that populates a monetary cell.
Section 3 keeps what generalises across assets — the boundary decision, the classification into SEEA asset categories, the account rows and identities. Sector-specific method belongs in Section 6, named by circular. Where a Section 3 circular is the only place a method appears, it moves rather than being deleted.
Section 6 is not only ecosystems and industries. The row above was widened in September 2026 after a read-across of the whole section found four circulars that the earlier wording did not admit: TG-6.11 treats an asset class, TG-6.12 a residual-flow class, TG-6.13 a spatial interface between two accounting domains, and TG-6.15 an intervention class. All four give method specific to their subject and cross-refer for the generic structure, which is the operative half of the test; the earlier wording named only ecosystems and sectors and so excluded them by accident rather than by decision.
Where two Section 6 circulars can record the same entry, one of them owns it and says so. The read-across found four such overlaps — submerged artificial structures, the coastal protection service, blue carbon pricing, and nutrient loads to coastal waters — each recorded in two places without a rule. A Section 6 circular that shares an account entry with another must name the owner in its boundary statement or at the point of overlap.

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Every circular in Sections 1 to 4 and 6 should carry a short boundary statement, in its :::note[Framework Position] block or immediately after it, naming which account or decision it owns and which circulars own the method it excludes. TG-3.9 is the model.

5. Page Length Guidance

Page counts refer to rendered PDF A4 pages at approximately 500 words per page. These are guidance targets, not enforced limits.

6. Version and Revision Policy

Format: v0.[Major].[Minor] — the leading 0. marks the consultation edition, which is not adopted guidance

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Major version (v0.1.0 → v0.2.0): Substantive content changes — new standards incorporated, significant methodological corrections, structural reorganisation
Minor version (v0.1.0 → v0.1.1): Editorial improvements — clarifications, added examples, typographic corrections, updated cross-references

All circulars undergo annual review to assess whether updates are needed
Core circulars are updated only when underlying standards change
Applied and Emerging circulars may be updated based on implementation experience

Superseded versions will be archived, with the URL scheme to be confirmed. The current version always appears at the canonical URL.

7.1 Circular Development Workflow

Table 7.1.1 below summarises the full per-circular review lifecycle for the Second Edition.

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Internal production uses an extended triage / director-review / Secretariat-review pipeline. Details are documented in project tooling and are not part of this public-facing circular.

Circulars are published on a monthly cadence following Secretariat review, with publication frequency varying by batch. Priority circulars may be fast-tracked, and updates to existing circulars are published as needed.

8. Dependency and Prerequisites

Dependencies are tracked in two ways:

YAML frontmatter: prerequisites and enables fields in each circular
Prose requirements section: Human-readable list with hyperlinks (Section 2 of each circular)

The prerequisites field and the prose Requirements section must be kept synchronised. The enables field is machine-readable only and has no prescribed prose counterpart.

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See TG-0.5 Navigating the Technical Guidance for the visual dependency graph.

Cross-cutting themes are catalogued in TG-0.5 Navigating the Technical Guidance. Authors should ensure consistency with the treatments described there. Key threads include:

Authors: [To be confirmed]

Reviewers: [To be confirmed]

GOAP. (2024). Discussion Paper: Modular Structure for GOAP Technical Guidance (internal working paper, GOAP Secretariat, not publicly distributed). Global Ocean Accounts Partnership.
United Nations. (2025). System of National Accounts 2025. United Nations.
United Nations. (2021). System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting. United Nations.
UNECE. (2019). Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM), Version 5.1.

Cite this report

Structure and Focus of the Technical Guidance

Structure and Focus of the Technical Guidance (2026) (GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting, TG-0.4, v0.10.1). GOAP Secretariat. https://guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-0/0-4-structure/

guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-0/0-4-structure

GOAP Technical GuidanceVersion 0.10.1 · 1 September 2026