The Closed World of Company Data

The Closed World of Company Data:
How Can Open Data on Companies Change the World?

Live Webcast at: http://streaming7.worldbank.org/vvflash/extlive1

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #OpenDTA

Description:

Open data in the corporate world: Why is it important? Where are the problems? How do we solve them?

We live in an data-driven and corporate world, with the corporate structures becoming increasingly complex, and corporate governance becoming increasingly weak. From corruption to jurisdiction shopping, money laundering to the extractive industries, tax evasion to political influence, the ability and incentives for companies to be used as a vehicle for bad rather than good has never been greater.

Yet the ability of civil society, journalists, anti-corruption investigators, and  governments to understand this still is massively hampered by lack of access to even the most basic types of company data. As a new report, The Closed World of Company Data
(http://www.access-info.org/documents/images/Closed_World_Company_Data.pdf)
published last week by OpenCorporates,  makes it clear - this is true even of countries that are members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP, http://www.opengovpartnership.org), one of whose 5 grand goals is "Increasing Corporate Accountability".

On average OGP countries scored just 21 out of a possible 100 points when rated upon open access to data held by company registers (including Spain, Greece and Brazil scoring zero). This event will analyze the importance of open data in corporate world - where the problems are and how we solve them - and its implications to our development work.

Moderator:

Samia Melhem, Senior Operations Officer, ICT Sector Unit, World Bank

Speaker:

Chris Taggart, Co-Founder, OpenCorporates (http://opencorporates.com)
Chris Taggart is the co-founder of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world. Just 15 months old, OpenCorporates has grown to over 40 million companies in over 50 jurisdictions, and is also working with many governmental organizations to improve access and quality of company  data (for example, they are on the Financial Stability Board's advisory panel on G-20 Global Legal Entity Identifier program).

Discussants:

• Tariq Khokhar, Open Data Evangelist, World Bank
• S. Akhtar Mahmood, Lead Investment Policy Officer, Business Regulation, World Bank
• Benjamin Herzberg, Program Lead, Responsible Business and Governance, World Bank Institute

Contact person for this event: Marta Priftis, mpriftis@worldbank.org