Lobster’s Master Data contains several thousand stakeholders key information. The up-to-date stakeholder data package allows Lobster users to get to know the stakeholders directly in Lobster. This allows focusing on designing and implementing advocacy projects instead of using time on background work.

The core of Master data is member of parliaments, ministers and commissioners, political advisers, and senior management of ministries and on the European level Director Generals. The Master Data covers all ministries/DG’s and will be further expanded to agencies. Lobster users have access to new influencers through multiple weekly updates.

MEP, MP, commissioner, minister, political adviser, …

Each profile of MEP/MP has a concise and standardised brief. Each profile has basic information about each MP and key, high-level stakeholders has:

• Date of birth or year of birth
• Constituency
• Committee memberships
• Educational background
• Previous work history, central for advocacy
• Most important positions of trust

The CVs of MPs are in line with their own declarations to Parliament. The CV of individual representatives may have been supplemented with information on the MP’s own website. The profiles of ministers and commissioners are similar to those of Members of Parliament.

The profile of a Member of Parliament contains information on his or her personal parliamentary assistant(s) if the representative has any. If a parliamentary group employs the assistants, they can be also found on the organisation page for each parliamentary group.

Ministers’ and commissioners’ profiles include information on their staff, ie secretaries, political advisors and heads of cabinet or secretaries of state.

The profiles of senior officials in ministries and director generals, such as director-general and Head of Department, aim for a similar profile as MPs and Political Advisers. When going down on the line of command, information is limited to contact details, titles and responsibilities, provided they can be found on public domain and unless otherwise agreed with Lobster’s client organisation.

Stakeholder data is up to date

The information of MPs, ministers, commissioners, DG heads and their assistants is systematically monitored and updated as necessary. The accuracy of the information is maintained by technical solutions and manually. The official source of government information is always the primary source of information.

Information of ministries’ and DG’s staff is kept up-to-date primarily based on the information provided by the organisation on its webpages or other openly available data sources.