OpenCorporates has already made a significant difference to the world’s access to company data, and now contains data on over 180 million companies from 139 jurisdictions. The Mohn Westlake Foundation’s grant will facilitate expansion of their work to find and assimilate new company-related data for the public benefit.

By the simple act of collecting data from company registers from across the globe and making it publicly available in one place, OpenCorporates has brought transparency to corporate activities, powered anti-corruption investigations and provided a hostile environment for the criminal use of companies. Many users, such as journalists and NGOs, require the opening of new data jurisdictions to aid their work in the exposure of the networks that allow corruption to go undetected.

Their work to add new jurisdictions is a difficult and time-consuming process involving complex analyses and investigations, as well as liaison with governments and local civil society. Data sources also require ongoing and significant maintenance. Our grant will help OpenCorporates to considerably advance this work by strengthening their data team, investing in new tools and technologies, and reforming processes to improve productivity and data management, thus allowing for significant and permanent difference to corporate transparency.

In their first six months they have laid solid foundations, having moved towards a more effective process-led approach, fixed some priority issues within their data pipeline, implemented a new reporting environment and created new visual, dynamic dashboards providing new insight into their data operations. Going forward, the grant will also enable the use of data science to increase product utility and uncover valuable insights to reinforce the case for opening up company register data across the globe.