Open Data Observatory

To complement my previous post, Private Company Registries in Germany & France : A Comparison it is interesting to look at data from non profit Open Data Watch , which provides benchmarks between 173 countries on the coverage and openness of data (economic, social, environmental) provided on the websites maintained by national statistical offices (NSOs). There is a staggering difference between France (ranked #53 out of 173) and Germany ( ranked #18 out of 173). It is noteworthy that France's low transparency score on environmental statistics makes it a laggard with the lowest score among European Union Member States. Does this reflect more generally the culture of openness of the French government?

Today I would like to compare information available for SMEs from public registries from Germany and France. Germany has made available publicly a company registry, BundesAnzeiger , which is an official publication of the Federal Republic of Germany. Once you enter the database , by clicking on 'FirmenName', you will access a range of different entries. If you click on Jahresabschluss (translated as "Annual Report") on the right column you will see the last annual reports from all companies (most of them private and including of very small size). There is mostly financial information, but also information frequently disclosed about the number of employees, financial structure, subsidiaries etc. There is even sometimes some disclosures about social, environmental and ethical information ( CSR ). This is available for free in a very standard way and information is third party audited. Some improvements could be made on data accessibility but overall it works pretty...