[open-government] The Closed World of Company Data

Wed Apr 18 10:38:05 UTC 2012

On 18/04/2012, at 10:02 PM, Helen Darbishire wrote:
> OpenCorporates’ report, “The Closed World of Company Data” finds that of 55 countries surveyed, the average score for public access to the company register is just 21 out of 100 points. The UK scored highest by a long way with 70 points out of 100, followed by the Czech Republic with 50 points, with the Slovak Republic and Albania (45 points each) also giving good public access to companies registers.

This is a useful report and thank you Helen for making it available.

It's a shame New Zealand is not a member of OGP so was not considered for the report.

Based on a quick examination of http://www.business.govt.nz/companies, my quick assessment is that NZ would score along the lines of:
Free & open search (30): 30
Licensing Open: 15 (out of 30, personal and in-house use allowed, non-commercial and derivatives not mentioned)
Available as (open) data: 0 (but perhaps 20 depending on the source for http://opencorporates.com/companies/nz )
Directors information: 10
Statutory findings: 10
Shareholders information: 10
Total (out of 100 points): 75-95

BTW, there seems to be an error in the scoring since the total available points sum to 110.

Regards
Jonathan