Here at OpenCorporates, we really care about official company data – and getting this data right means we need to know a lot about the nature of legal entities, what a company is, and what its legal personality actually means, particularly in a world where companies are ever increasing in number, speed and complexity. Every … Continue reading A brief history of shell companies: must read for company data wonks
For the past 50 years, companies, regulators, investigators and journalists have mostly used ‘Black Box’ data - data that is opaque, not well defined, uses proprietary identifiers, and has poor data quality feedback loops. But continued reliance on this data could put a firm out of business within five years, according to a new report by OpenCorporates.
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...
Last week, OpenCorporates published Fireflies and Algorithms: The Coming Explosion of Companies. We initially had some qualms about writing the piece. Would it accelerate a move towards a future where companies can come into existence for brief periods of time, like fireflies in the night, and then disappear? In the end we saw enough pointers … Continue reading Fireflies and Algorithms: Reading List
Hot off the press: OpenCorporates has published a new long read exploring how the rise of new technologies will massively the world of company formation, and with it the very nature of companies.
With new members joining OpenCorporates and the wider open data community, we get many requests for suggested reading. So, we’ve created a very long reading list and divided it into themes - we’ll share this bit by bit in the coming weeks. But this is also a work in progress, and a call for contributions; … Continue reading Reading List: Data Journalism
This guide is dedicated to the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered near her home in Malta on the 16th of October 2017, following a series of stories she did around the Panama Papers. Daphne fought tirelessly against corruption, and her contributions will be sorely missed. We’d like to take this as opportunity to send our thoughts to the Caruana Galizia family, and assert our support for investigative journalists around the world.
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.
This is the first in an occasional series of resources for background reading on corporate transparency space (see also Impact of Open Company Data), to help new OpenCorporates staff and the wider open data community get up to speed. These are also works-in-progress, and a call for contributions; tell us what we’ve missed and what else … Continue reading Reading list: Beneficial Ownership Transparency
blog.opencorporates.com 