Open data obstacle? OpenCorporates claims it is being blocked by Ireland’s CRO - New Media - New Media | siliconrepublic.com - Ireland's Technology News Service

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-11-02

Summary:

Chris Taggart, a leading proponent of the open data movement and a gatherer of information on close to 50m businesses worldwide via his OpenCorporates.com site, has told Siliconrepublic.com that the Companies Registration Office, not Iris Oifigiuil as originally reported, has blocked his IP address, preventing him adding information on businesses to his site... At the time of writing,OpenCorporates.com has information ranging from court orders to financial filings and more on some 49,232,857 businesses around the world. This assembly of knowledge includes data on some 512,302 businesses in Ireland, including company address information, companies' office information, trademark registration, and more.  The open data movement seeks to open the vaults on a lot of information that sits on servers inside government departments, local councils and other establishments, with a view to using the data for the public good.  In Taggart’s case, opening publicly available information and data on businesses to a wider audience via the internet will empower other businesses and consumers to make correct decisions based around how solvent a company is, the history of its directors, and so on.  He told Siliconrepublic.com that the Companies Registration Office has blocked his IP address, preventing him from ‘scraping’ basic information and filings by Irish businesses. 'Everything we gather is all about the public record,' Taggart explained. 'It’s about making public records usable...'  'We would love to have more Irish information but the Irish Government doesn’t seem to be very keen on open data...' Taggart has spoken to a number of financial bloggers in Ireland who have suggested the policy of blocking OpenCorporates.com has been deliberate.  'I think it’s a mistake given the financial situation in Ireland where some people over the last 10 years have become very rich and lots of ordinary people have become much poorer.  To not be able to see that information seems a little odd at best,' said Taggart, who has just returned from Basle, Switzerland, having served on an advisory group for the G20 Summit and in recent weeks addressed the European Parliament.  We are about moving towards making official data more open and accessible. At some point in the next three weeks we will have reached our 50m milestone of companies we have information on. It’s all about open data, just being able to search in one place and gather together streams of relevant data...'"

Link:

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/30011-open-data-obstacle/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.data oa.comment oa.government oa.ireland oa.open_corporates

Date tagged:

11/02/2012, 13:44

Date published:

11/02/2012, 09:44