What does true transparency mean in today's complex, connected and data-driven world? To us, it means the ability to: Access the resource you needFind the records you needUnderstand the recordsCompare the records to each otherJoin the records to other records – to make sense of them This is true transparency, and it's the transparency that … Continue reading Functional opacity in company data: What it is & why it matters
Earlier this year, we reported on OpenCorporates' legal battle against the Quebec company register in the Montreal Superior Court – 2 years earlier we had applied to the court to rule that the register was wrong in its assertion that Act Respecting the Legal Publicity of Enterprises (ALPE) meant that we weren't allowed to hold … Continue reading OpenCorporates wins Quebec court battle
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
Great news: last week, the Council of Europe approved the "Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information" (press release). This was the last opportunity for the directive to be rejected or changed, and it will go into force 20 days after the directive is published in the EU Official Journal (probably … Continue reading It’s official: EU Company Registers to go open data (subject to…)
Belarus is our latest addition to OpenCorporates’ database of companies, making it jurisdiction #122. We’ve added 1.3 million companies of which around 320,000 are registered companies, and just under 1 million sole-trader / entrepreneur (Предприниматель) registrations, many of which are historical records. The data is sourced from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and … Continue reading New jurisdiction: Belarus (1.3 million companies)
We’re pleased to announce Bolivia as our first South American jurisdiction to be added to OpenCorporates. Around 170,000 companies have been added, using data from Fundempresa, the non-profit concessionaire running the company registry database and website website, under contract to the Registro de Comercio in Bolivia. This also makes it our 121st jurisdiction. The data … Continue reading Bolivia companies added to OpenCorporates
Yesterday, OpenCorporates filed suit in the Superior Court (Civil Division) in Montreal, Quebec, for a declaratory judgement against the Quebec Registraire des Enterprises, to ensure that OpenCorporates data on Quebec companies remains freely available to journalists, NGOs and thousands of other users around the world. The suit is in response to a demand that the … Continue reading OpenCorporates takes Quebec company register to court
This is a guest post by Waldo Jaquith, who runs US Open Data, and this month pretty much single-handedly persuaded the US state of Virginia to open up all their company register data OpenCorporates’ work is in aggregating openly published corporate registries, but less well known is the work that the organization foments. Moving corporate … Continue reading 24 months + $3000 + 1 cake: How Virginia’s company data was opened up
Last week, OpenCorporates reached another minor milestone, as we hit 90 million companies. That's a long way from the 3 million companies we started with 4 years ago, and yet we're not finished yet. In fact, we've got several more jurisdictions (totalling several million more companies) going through our data quality checks at the moment, and … Continue reading OpenCorporates hits 90 million companies… plus news on data quality
We've praised UK Companies House many times in the past couple of years, for using good identifiers, opening up director data, even company accounts, but now there's even more reason. Today, the UK Government has announced that it going to fully open up all its data, and making it available free of charge (it is already … Continue reading STOP PRESS: UK Companies House to go fully open
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