Just how much does access to company data vary across EU member states?

The last report on access to company data in the EU was published by OpenCorporates in 2012, when the average score was 23 out of 100. Since then there have been some significant changes, both in the EU, and globally. A year after that report, the EU published its open data strategy, and there have been numerous directives and reports addressing company data.

Yet despite this, our new report ‘EU Company Data: State of the Union 2020’ shows the average has increased to just 40 out of…

Official company data is difficult to access as data in many EU countries, most notably Spain, Italy and Germany. Our recent report on access to company data in the EU, ‘EU Company Data: State of the Union 2020’, identified 15 areas where the lack of company register data as open data frustrates, impedes or otherwise has a negative impact on EU policy.

Our last post showed 5 crucial ways that a lack of access to official company data undermines public policy, disadvantages business and widens inequalities.

But that’s not all: here are 5 further ways Europe’s citizens and businesses suffer…

Just how damaging is closed company data?

The European Union is a great example of how it really undermines public policy, disadvantages business and widens inequalities. Our recent report on access to company data in the EU, ‘EU Company Data: State of the Union 2020’, identified 15 areas where the lack of company register data as open data frustrates, impedes or otherwise has a negative impact on EU policy.

Below are the first five.

The cost of these issues runs to many billions of Euros for the member states and their citizens, and more than that, they stifle the innovations…

Company formation has, so far, been relatively unaltered by the data revolution.

But change is coming, and will likely create a massive increase in the speed, number and complexity of companies, all powered by automation of company formation, and driven by demand from new technologies.

As with the shift from paper to electronic stock trading, the automation of companies will have profound and wide reaching effects for society as a whole, fundamentally disrupting how, when and why companies are formed… and the ways we hold them to account.

This blog is the second in a series we’ll be publishing about…

It was another momentous year for OpenCorporates.

Over the course of 2017 we laid the foundations to secure our public mission for the long term, advanced our relentless campaigns, and of course continued the complex work of opening and cleaning up company data. We’ve also grown in size, welcoming a whole load of newbies (and saying a fond goodbye to a couple of long-standing team members).

First, we want a moment to say, ‘Thanks!’ OpenCorporates exists to allow journalists, NGOs and others to use our data for good, and in return the community has been invaluable — you’ve joined our…

OpenCorporates is proud to announce our latest feature, global industry codes! While we’ve long collected data for industry codes for a number of jurisdictions (including the UK, France, Norway, even a few US states), we recently finished mapping multiple industry codes to the UN’s international standard for such codes, ISIC (Revision 4).

Industry codes might not sound that sexy, but for understanding, filtering and analysing companies, they are essential. As well as allowing academics and statisticians to do economic and social analysis, they can help investigators and journalists get a better understanding of what a company actually does, or be…

We live in a corporate world — companies are involved with everything we do, yet the disparity between the availability of personal and company information is striking. We see the timeline of significant (and not so significant) events of our friends in social network feeds every day. Yet it’s extraordinarily difficult to do the same for the companies that we work for, buy from, do business with, help craft our laws via lobbying, and generally influence our lives in multiple ways.

That’s why OpenCorporates is creating a corporate events dataset, as part of the EU Business Graph project — to…

Hello. Tell us about who you are & what your role is at OpenCorporates.

I’ve joined the OpenCorporates team as an Account Manager. I will be working to support and grow OpenCorporates corporate clients to support the public mission of the organisation as much as possible.

I’ve spent the last 5–6 years working in Open Data both at the Open Data Institute and central government. I am passionate about open company data and excited to be a part of an organisation that is making a real positive impact on the world.

What drew you to OpenCorporates?

So much! The mission…