On the Treasury of Lives a government official is considered any person who served, in an official capacity, in a national or regional government office. This includes those who were born into the position, in the case of an aristocrat. In the Himalayan or Mongolian context a government official might be either lay or cleric.
The majority of biographies of government officials on the Treasury of Lives are of those connected to the Tibetan government, the Ganden Podrang. The officials were called zhungzhab. They were divided into an ecclesiastical branch whose members were called tsedrung and a lay branch, whose members were called drungkhor. The tsedrung were monks officials recruited from all levels of society, whereas the drungkhor were recruited almost exclusively from the aristocracy. Altogether there were around 175 tsedrung and 175 drungkhor. There were seven ranks of officials within the Ganden Podrang government with the Dalai Lama holding the first rank. The ministers held the third rank, most of the higher officials belonged to the fourth rank, and new entrants into the bureaucracy worked their way up to the seventh rank.