[Open-companies] Crowdsourcing URLs to corporate registries

Mon Aug 1 18:15:50 UTC 2011

Hello all,

I should perhaps re-post this again later, but in an email correspondence
with Chris Taggart, we had the idea of putting together a spreadsheet like
mySociety did for its FixMyTransport to crowdsource URLs for corporate
registries. Here's mySociety's blog post and accompanying spreadsheet:

http://www.mysociety.org/2011/06/22/fixmytransport-is-close-to-launch-and-we-need-your-help-to-make-it-fantastic/
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0As0ZKOGBI8TTdGxsSjk2SnNYc2p0WlY5Z1V6V3ByeFE&hl=en&authkey=CLr67P8D#gid=4

I've started collecting metadata on corporate registries on this spreadsheet
as a way to track OpenCorporates' progress, which we can use to source a new
spreadsheet for crowdsourcing:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0As0ZKOGBI8TTdGxsSjk2SnNYc2p0WlY5Z1V6V3ByeFE&hl=en&authkey=CLr67P8D#gid=4

Aside from attribution to the person who did the research, we'd want a notes
field for what data is available/how it is made available. One tip I'd share
for hard-to-find registries in developing countries is to use the World
Bank's Doing Business project to find the country-specific names for
ministries/registries, for example:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/botswana/starting-a-business

Cheers!

James
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