An open solution for interoperability: The launch of version 0.4 of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard

Today we launch a new version of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS).

BODS is an open standard which helps anyone generate adequate, accurate and up-to-date data about who owns, controls or benefits from corporate vehicles.

With international standards on beneficial ownership data being strengthened in recent years, BODS offers an open solution to the urgent need for greater standardisation. It provides a solid conceptual and practical framework for collecting and publishing beneficial ownership data, resulting in data that is interoperable, more easily reused and of higher quality.

Visit standard.openownership.org to learn more and discover the full documentation which is available in English, French, Spanish and Russian.

New in version 0.4

Based on years of learning and technical work, version 0.4 of the open standard introduces new features to capture high-quality data on how beneficial ownership relationships change over time, how to represent declarations and how to separate core data from metadata within statements.

New documentation sets out how to represent trusts and trust-like arrangements in BODS as well as how to capture nominee relationships.

The development of version 0.4 builds on previous versions which already allowed anyone to capture beneficial ownership data on a wide range of entities such as state-owned enterprises, and publicly listed companies, as well as legal arrangements.

Thom Townsend, executive director of Open Ownership, said: “This represents a big step forward for thinking about how we best model ownership and control information. Open Ownership has drawn on years of working with those implementing beneficial ownership reforms to develop this new version of the standard.

“We are grateful to everyone who has taken the time to input into this next version and look forward to working with the growing community of users to develop the standard further.”

About the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard

BODS is an open standard developed by Open Ownership in partnership with Open Data Services.

Countries including Canada, Nigeria, Latvia, Armenia, Namibia and Botswana have adopted or are in the process of adopting BODS. It is also the official UK government open standard for beneficial ownership information.

All changes to the standard draft, documentation and specification take place via GitHub and a feature tracker is available which documents new features being researched, proposed or implemented.

Open Ownership is currently updating the range of open source tools which help people use BODS data. These include our visualisation library and data review tool which will be updated to work with version 0.4 of BODS.

Watch the launch video: