Holding Companies and Their Directors to Account: An Open Data Solution
Date: Tuesday, 30th October 2012
Venue: 88mph
Time: 1800hrs - 2000hrs
Highly interconnected global companies have exploded in complexity and power, and increasingly affect our lives for good and bad. Yet in tandem with this growth, corporate governance has weakened. The opacity and complexity of this corporate world is a key enabler of corruption, tax avoidance and organised crime.
Until now painstaking manual investigation has been required to track even the most basic facts about a company, such as whether it exists, and who owns it. Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates.com believes it’s time to change that. Chris is building an open access database with basic information on every corporate entity in the world which can then be remixed and combined with other data, such as government contracts.
Chris Taggart will offer a hands-on session on some ways to use powerful data-driven tools and open access databases to mine company information from across the world. Chris will show how highly interconnected global companies have exploded in complexity and power, while corporate governance has weakened. The opacity and complexity of this corporate world is a key enabler of corruption, tax avoidance and organised crime.
Chris will demonstrate how you can use even basic company information to remix and combine your data with other information, such as government contracts or regulatory filings, to gain new insights.
We invite all those with an interest in issues of corruption and transparency to a hands-on practical session to learn about Chris’s techniques and how you can put them to work for you.
PART 1: Why Open Up Corporate Data?
Corporate transparency challenges globally and in Africa (Chris Taggart)
PART 2: How to Open Up Corporate Data
Demo - What you can do with OpenCorporates database (Chris Taggart)
Q&A/Hands-on advice
Interested? Please register online for the event (http://opencorporates.eventbrite.com/)