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Availability: Company register

The following indicator is under consideration for this pilot edition of the Barometer: To what extent is company information available as structured open data?

Feedback on draft Global Data Barometer Indicators

You are looking at a draft indicator to be included in the expert survey of the Global Data Barometer. Between now and May 10th we are inviting your feedback on this indicator and the elements it contains. You can provide your feedback by (a) completing the feedback form below; or (b) adding in-line annotations.

Feedback form

You can share your feedback on the Availability: Company register indicator here, or make use of Hypothes.is annotations

Show/hide supporting questions

Existence

  • Is this data available online in any form?
    • Data is not available online
      Supporting questions: Are there other offline ways to access this data in the country? (e.g. attending an office to inspect it)
    • Data is available, but not as a result of government action
      Supporting questions: If government is not providing access to data, how is this data available? Please provide a URL for where this data can be found
    • Data is available from government, or because of government actions
      Supporting questions: Please provide a URL for where this data can be found

Elements

Part 1: Dataset specific

  • The dataset contains unique identifiers for each company (No, Partially, Yes)

  • Basic company information, including company name, legal form, status, and registered address (No, Partially, Yes)

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If Partially: If one or more of the basic company data features is not covered, please list which (e.g. registered address)

  • The data contains details of each director (No, Partially, Yes)

  • Structured data on company accounts is available for each registered company (No, Partially, Yes)

Part 2: General checklist

  • Data is provided in machine-readable format(s) (No, Partially, Yes)

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where this machine-readable data can be found. (Additional URLs can be included in the justification and supporting evidence)

    If Partially or Yes: Please provide a comma separated list of the formats available? (E.g. csv, json)

    If Partially: What prevents you from assessing this data as fully machine-readable?

  • The machine-readable dataset is available as a whole (No, Partially, Yes) Answer no if it's only possible to access individual records; Answer partially if it's possible to export extracts of the data; Answer yes if there are bulk downloads or APIs providing access to the whole dataset without financial, technical or legal barriers.

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where bulk download access is available or described.

    If Partially or Yes: If bulk access is provided through an API, please provide a link to where the API is described.

  • Data is openly licensed. (No, Partially, Yes)

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If No: If there are explicit restrictions placed on re-use of the dataset, briefly describe those here.

    If Partially or Yes: If the data is provided with an explicit open license, please provide the name of the license, or a link to it here.

  • Data is timely and updated. (No, Partially, Yes)

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    When was the most recent update to this dataset?

  • There are accessible and open official tools available to help users locate and explore individual records. (No, Partialy , Yes) Answer 'partially' if tools make it possible to get at extracts of data without having to download a full dataset. Answer 'yes' if there is an interactive tool that displays user-filtered extracts of the data to answer simple questions without downloading data at all.

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If Partialy or Yes: Please provide URL

    If Partialy : What are the main barriers to accessibility and usability?

  • Data is available in all the country’s official or national languages. If the country has no official or national languages, data is available in the major languages of the country. (No, Partially, Yes)

    Supporting questions (conditional)

    If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe the language coverage available.

Extent

  • How comprehensive is the data assessed for this question?
    • The data assessed covers one or more localities, but there are many other localities without available data, or with data of a lesser quality.
      Supporting questions: Which locality does this data cover?
    • The data assessed covers one or more localities, and is a representative example of the kind of data that can be found for all, or most, localities.
    • The data assessed provides national coverage.

Definitions and Identification

A national company register should contain details of companies that are incorporated within that country. For the purpose of this indicator, focus on limited liability companies or equivalent.

If there are multiple forms of limited liability company in this country operating under different frameworks, you should focus your assessment on the most common domestic form, as identified in the World Bank's Doing Business report.

If there are notable variations in the assessment you would make for other common forms of company, please briefly comment on this in the free text justification.

Starting points

  • Sources:
    • The Open Company Data Index contains assessments for most countries in the world, and provides links to company register web pages in the small print at the bottom of country pages. Some assessments were carried out as early as 2012, so you will need to check the current state of data availability carefully with a primary review of the register.
    • The World Bank's Doing Business report provides details of the relevant registrar in each country.

  • Search:

    • The company register page for details of data downloads or APIs.

  • Consult:

    • Third-parties who appear to be using bulk data from the company register to ask whether they access this from an open data source, or via some other route.

National and sub-national considerations

In some countries company registration is a sub-national responsibility, carried out by individual states, regions or cities.

To achieve the highest scores on this indicator, it should be possible to easily access data about all companies in a country. This might be achieved by:

  • Having a central register of companies;
  • Government providing an aggregation service that brings together data from local registers; or
  • Having standardised or comparable quality data availability from every sub-national register, such that a third-party can easily aggregate data from them.

To assess countries where company registration is organised sub-nationally, researchers should select the strongest examples of sub-national practice, and then indicate whether this is an outlier, or an example of widespread practice. If relevant, note in the justification any barriers that might exist preventing third-parties from aggregating data from different sub-national registers.

See the justification for Governance: Company registration details.