Understanding corporate structures through open data: Open Ownership

The Global Registry of Property Beneficiaries is an initiative originating from civil society that responds to the increasing problem of opacity, and the occasional lack of integrity, in a part of the business world, and the social problems stemming from it.

The open and free registry will use data from public records that are already announced or existing in some countries such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and at least 11 other countries around the world, a list to which new countries are continuously being added. At the same time, it also provides a platform for governments, multinational companies or other non-governmental organisations to require companies with whom they do business to self-report who their beneficiaries are. This centralised and global access is necessary if we want to have a clear vision of the complex property structures that exist today, given the global nature of corporations and the beneficiary networks that control them.

To support the open data hosted on the platform, it has been necessary to create a new global and open standard for data exchange that responds to existing needs and facilitates their international adoption. There is already a trial version of the registry with data from more than two million companies from 24 countries. Its key features are:

• Single, centralised cloud-based solution
• Availability via web interface or application programming interface (API)
• Based on a robust open data model that allows for international use
• It provides unique global identifiers for each individual and company, facilitating their subsequent analysis

The platform is promoted by four of the world's leading organisations in the field of active transparency: Transparency International, Global Witness, the Open Contracting Partnership and the Web Foundation, along with one of the leading new social economy in the sector: OpenCorporates. This first version of the registry is a big step forward, but much work remains to be done, mainly in three areas:

• Fostering the demand for existing data by as many users as possible to make transparency in the ownership of companies be a fundamental part of them and for it to become the de-facto standard in financial markets
• Making data as easy as possible to use, covering a wide variety of jurisdictions and sectors with reliable, high-quality data and unravelling the complexity of existing control networks
• Promoting a paradigm shift in companies so they understand the benefits of sharing their data as a transparency tool that helps them attract new clients, partners and investors and thus improve their competitiveness

To make this possible, it is necessary to have the collaboration of the open data community, as well as their transparency and active participation through the different working groups established to advance the project. With the necessary support, it will be possible for beneficiary registries to become, over time, a standard open data source, as is already happening in some specific areas such as in the extractive industry, or in the area of ​​international development in the hands of entities such as the World Bank.