[okfn-be] Desired feedback on datasets

[Bart Van Loon]

It was Wed Feb 22 at 01:13PM when Gmail - Wouter wrote:
>    Op 22-02-12 11:52, Cedric De Vroey schreef:
> 
>      "I proposed them that it would be better to license the KBO data
>      to 100.000 people for EUR 6, instead of the 6 parties for EUR
>      100.000. They didn't like the idea because of the additional
>      administration"
> 
>    As an argument to convince them, I think it's not very strong.

I agree. This was just part of a long discussion over multiple sessions,
however. :-)

[...]
>    In belgium, everyone can access balance sheets of annual accounts
>    (de jaarrekeningen) of Belgian Companies.  You can download it
>    manually as pdf or XBRL.

Yup, but you have to jump through endless loops to get there. I had a
discussion with the NBB some time back, and they also have paid accounts
(expensive!) for automatic retrieval. They only thing they give for free
in an automatic fashion is an email (!) every Monday with a list of
VAT-numbers of companies whose financial data has been updated. Not that
useful of course.

Needless to say, it wasn't that hard to write a script that takes a
VAT-number as a parameter and downloads the most recent XBRL file
automatically. ;-)

>    Needing to pay 100.000EUR to access anything(?) from KBO, just
>    seems very discriminatory.

Note that similarly to the NBB data discussed above, anyone can access
the KBO for free at any time. It's just very cumbersome to do so. The
license grants you access to bulk data. One of the 6 companies buying
this is Graydon for example. Their business model is to enhance and
enrich this data from other data sources and sell it on with a profit.

(
Now, this is a business model that The Datatank could shake
fundamentally. ;-)
)

The guys behind openbiz.be have a scraper for the KBO by the way.
Perhaps they are willing to share it. Toon Vanagt is one of the founders
of Openbiz.

-- 
regards,
Bart Van Loon

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