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The UK’s National Data Strategy: first impressions and observations

After years of promises, the UK Government has finally announced the launch of a ‘framework’ National Data Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to “drive the UK in building a world-leading data economy while ensuring public trust in data use” and the government has set out five missions for this work: Unlocking the value […]

Open Data Day 2020: it’s a wrap!

  On Saturday 7th March 2020, the tenth Open Data Day took place with people around the world organising over 300 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. Thanks to the generous support of this year’s funders – Datopian, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Hivos, the Latin American Open Data Initiative (ILDA), Mapbox, Open Contracting Partnership and Resource Watch – the Open […]

Supporting the Open COVID Pledge

Openness and transparency are key to solving the COVID-19 crisis. The open sharing of data will help ensure public trust, encourage the restoration of public confidence in experts in the era of populism, and ultimately help lead to a vaccine to defeat the virus. The Open COVID Pledge – a project of an international coalition […]

Meet the organisations who have been awarded Open Data Day 2020 mini-grants

The Open Knowledge Foundation is happy to announce that dozens of organisations from all over the world have been awarded mini-grants to support the running of events that celebrate Open Data Day on Saturday 7th March 2020. Thanks to the generous support of this year’s mini-grant funders – Datopian, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Hivos, […]

Announcing the launch of the Open Data Day 2020 mini-grant scheme

We are happy to announce the launch of the mini-grant scheme for Open Data Day 2020. This scheme will provide small funds to support the organisation of open data-related events across the world on Saturday 7th March 2020. Thanks to the generous support of this year’s mini-grant funders – Datopian, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, […]

Why greater tax transparency is needed to help fix the broken global tax system

Public CBCR by Financial Transparency Coalition is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 The international tax system is broken and in need of urgent updating to address issues which allow globalised businesses to move their profits and intellectual property around the world, often to locations where they pay the least tax. Indeed some economists estimate that “close to […]

Two years on, little action from the EU on public country-by-country reporting

Two years ago, members of the European Parliament voted to force large multinational corporations registered in Europe to reveal how much tax they pay, how many people they employ and what profits they make in every country where they work. The transparency measure – known as public country-by-country reporting (or public CBCR) – was first […]

Why public country-by-country reporting should be introduced in the UK and across Europe

The release of the Paradise Papers has drawn attention to international calls for greater tax transparency to tackle the issues raised by the leak of millions of documents detailing the offshore behaviour of some of the world’s richest people and corporations. Along with a renewed push for the creation of public beneficial ownership registers to […]

Why MEPs should vote in favour of releasing public country-by-country reporting as open data

Tax avoidance and profit shifting by corporations across the world is an issue which has been gaining visibility over the past decade with many governments, campaigners, researchers and journalists calling for urgent political action. These calls have only gotten louder following recent reporting on scandals such as Luxleaks and the Panama Papers by the International […]