In January, we blogged that we're now publishing an internal policy paper – How OpenCorporates Should Handle Company Number Problems – under a Creative Commons Licence. We’ve since identified a few new cases which should be covered by our policy, so we’ve published a new version of this paper...
You might have noticed that last week OpenCorporates launched the German company data. Bringing in the German company data was a mammoth task, as we've already started writing about – and we’ll be publishing more blog posts about the precise details of this in the near future.
This week, OpenCorporates launched over 5 million companies from Germany, marking our 130th jurisdiction. This is a guest blog post by Georg Neumann, Senior Manager of Communications and Engagement at Open Contracting Partnership, on why we need open contracting data too. Read the original version of this blog in German here. A large portion of the German … Continue reading Guest blog: Wer, wie, was – why Germany needs an open corporate register and open contracting
Company numbers are identifiers issued by corporate registers to give certainty and clarity to legal entity information. When they are well-designed they are unique, persistent and unambiguous. The reason they are so important is that companies change their names relatively frequently, and legal names are even reused, meaning that such identifiers are the only way of categorically identifying legal entities.
Great news – it looks as if Europe is taking a huge step forward for corporate transparency and open data with the new Public Sector Information directive.
Buried deep in a consultation paper published by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is some good news for open data: the FCA is considering making the Mutuals Public Register – a public record of building societies, credit unions and other registered societies – available as open data (currently, it’s charged for).
This is the third in a series of data-focused blog posts explaining what goes on behind the scenes when we bring a new jurisdiction into OpenCorporates.
This summer, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) authored a draft bill to create a register of beneficial owners for overseas entities that own land in the UK. As part of our work advocating for more open company data, OpenCorporates responded to the public consultation on the draft legislation. A brief summary, and our full response, is available below.
This is the second of our behind-the-scenes series of data-focused blog posts intended to help explain what happens when we introduce a new company jurisdiction to OpenCorporates. In the previous blog post we discussed how we find new sources of company data & choose the most appropriate one. In this, Part 2, we’re covering Analysis … Continue reading From company register to standardized open data, our processes explained – Part 2: Analysis
As Becky Hogge notes in her important report on the impact of open data, tracking impact is tricky. By its nature, open data is resistant to traditional impact reporting; in part because we don't know exactly how it is being used, and in part because the value chain is so diffuse. So, Hogge argues, outside of sweeping statements about potential, at this stage impact is largely indicated by “fragments” of stories from the ground.
blog.opencorporates.com 