Tag Archives: Companies House

Britain does a great job of opening its data, except for what journalists really want

Fighting with inflatable hammers? Image by Joe Shlabotnik. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Journalist SA Mathieson has used open data in Britain to put together an impressive new ebook. In a guest post for OJB he looks at the country’s strengths when it comes to open data — and the problems still facing journalists who want to see how the public’s money is spent.

It is tough for a British journalist to admit that their government does something well, but here goes: when it comes to openly releasing data, Great Britain (in other words England, Scotland and Wales) is second only to Taiwan according to the Global Open Data Index.

Westminster gets maximum marks for releasing data on the government’s budget, national statistics, administrative boundaries, national maps, air quality and company registers. Continue reading

How we did it: investigating Nigerian football agents

Last year I was part of a team — with Yemisi Akinbobola and  Ogechi Ekeanyawu — that won a CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year award for an investigation into Nigerian football agents. The project, funded by Journalismfund.eu, and also available in an immersive longform version, combined data journalism and networked production with on-the-ground reporting. Here are some of the lessons we drew from the project… Continue reading

2 how-tos: researching people and mapping planning applications

Mapping planning applications

Sid Ryan’s planning applications map

Sid Ryan wanted to see if planning applications near planning committee members were more or less likely to be accepted. In two guest posts on Help Me Investigate he shows how to research people online (in this case the councillors), and how to map planning applications to identify potential relationships.

The posts take in a range of techniques including:

  • Scraping using Scraperwiki and the Google Drive spreadsheet function importXML
  • Mapping in Google Fusion Tables
  • Registers of interests
  • Using advanced search techniques
  • Using Land Registry enquiries
  • Using Companies House and Duedil
  • Other ways to find information on individuals, such as Hansard, LinkedIn, 192.com, Lexis Nexis, whois and FriendsReunited

If you find it useful, please let me know – and if you can add anything… please do.