How to Cite a Government Document or Report

Government bodies are among the largest publishers in the world: statistics, health guidance, policy papers, inquiry reports, technical standards. The documents are reliable and free, and they are awkward to cite because the "author" is an organization nested inside larger organizations.

What to Collect

• Named authors, if any, from the title page
• The agency responsible, and its parent department
• Year, or full date for web pages and press releases
• Title, exactly as printed
• Report, publication or command paper number
• URL or DOI

The worked example is APA's own model: the National Cancer Institute booklet Taking Time: Support for People With Cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059), published in 2019. The institute is part of the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

In-text: (National Cancer Institute, 2019)

The most specific agency is the author. The parent agencies, largest first, fill the publisher slot. If the author and publisher would be identical, leave the publisher out.

With named individuals as authors:

MLA (9th Edition)

In-text: (United States, Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Cancer Institute 12)

MLA arranges government authors from the largest unit to the smallest, separated by commas, so that all of a government's publications sit together in your works-cited list. Because that makes a long parenthetical citation, it is usually neater to name the agency in your sentence and give only the page number in parentheses. MLA also accepts the simpler approach of listing the agency as it appears on the document. Whichever you choose, apply it consistently.

Chicago (18th Edition)

Footnote:

Bibliography:

Author-date in-text: (National Cancer Institute 2019, 12)

Legal and legislative documents (bills, statutes, hearings, court decisions) are not covered by this pattern. Chicago puts them in their own run of sections, 14.170 to 14.207, which opens with "Recommended stylebooks" and includes "Note form for legal-style citations".

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

In-text: (National Cancer Institute, 2019, p. 12)

For print, replace "Available at" with the place of publication and publisher. UK command papers carry their series number after the title, in the form (Cm xxxx). If you cite governments of more than one country, Cite Them Right suggests beginning the author with the country, for example "Great Britain. Department for Education".

IEEE

IEEE handles agency publications with its report format: the author, the title in quotation marks, the agency and its location, the report number and the date.

In-text: [1]

The IEEE Reference Guide's section titled "U.S. Government Documents" covers congressional bills and resolutions specifically, in this form:

Abbreviating Agency Names

Long names can be shortened after the first mention.

• APA: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024), then (CDC, 2024). The reference list keeps the full name.
• MLA: shorten common words in parenthetical citations: Dept. for Department, Natl. for National.
• Chicago author-date: you can list the entry under the abbreviation, with the full name in parentheses: NCI (National Cancer Institute). 2019.

Statistics and Data

A statistical release or bulletin (a labour market report, a census brief) is a report. Cite it as above.

A table or figure you looked up in a data portal is a dataset. APA's pattern:

If the data are updated continuously, use the year of the version you used, or "n.d." with a retrieval date.

A number you read on a web page is cited as the web page. See how to cite a website.

International and Intergovernmental Bodies

The United Nations, World Health Organization, OECD, World Bank and European Commission are cited the same way, with the organization as author:

For UN resolutions and treaties, which are legal instruments, follow the legal citation guide your department uses.

Laws, Bills, Regulations and Court Cases

These are not "government documents" in the sense this guide covers. They are legal sources, with citation forms built around volume and section numbers.

• United States: the usual authority is The Bluebook. A federal statute looks like this: Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. (1990). See the Bluebook guide and how to cite a Supreme Court case.
• United Kingdom: most law schools use OSCOLA. See the OSCOLA guide.
• Australia: see the AGLC guide.

Common Mistakes

• Treating the document as authorless when an agency is plainly responsible for it
• Naming the whole government ("U.S. Government") as author instead of the agency
• Reversing APA's order, with the department as author and the agency as publisher
• Leaving out the report or publication number
• Citing a news story about a report instead of the report
• Citing a statute or court case in report format
• Using a link to a search result or a session-specific download address

Sources for These Formats

• APA Style, "Report by a Government Agency References" (apastyle.apa.org)
• MLA Handbook, 9th ed., on government authors; MLA Style Center (style.mla.org)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., chapter 14 table of contents, sections 14.170 to 14.207 on legal and public documents (chicagomanualofstyle.org)
• Pears and Shields, Cite Them Right; University College Dublin Library, Harvard style guide, "Official publications"
• IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, sections N, "Reports", and R, "U.S. Government Documents"

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE. For non-government reports, see how to cite a report.