Time to be done with DUNS
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Kiley Arroyo
Oct 9, 2014, 5:27:33 PM10/9/14
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Hello CRN,
Earlier this week the Sunlight Foundation posted a rather interesting piece that may be of interest to those of you that use Duns & Bradstreet data. In case you're unfamiliar, the Sunlight Foundation is, "a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. We do so by creating tools, open data, policy recommendations, journalism and grant opportunities to dramatically expand access to vital government information to create accountability of our public officials."
I'd love to hear your thoughts should you have any to share. Randy Cohen - that means you ;)
Time to be done with DUNS
On Sept. 9, the Washington Post reported that Recovery.gov, the website that provides oversight for federally distributed funds, would soon be losing a significant amount of data. Why? Because the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board which operates the site can’t afford to renew its yearly $1.5 million dollar license with Duns & Bradstreet: the only firm authorized to assign ID numbers to entities doing business with the federal government. In 2012, the General Services Administration expressed its concern with this lack of competition and has been looking into alternatives. Meanwhile, there are a number of efforts to change this system, and the requirements under the DATA Act provide an opportunity for this change. At a town hall discussion hosted by the Treasury Department, we urged the federal government to “dump DUNS” and find a more open and transparent way of tracking the entities with which it does business. We previously explained the problems associated with highly restrictive identifying systems in our 6 Degrees of Corporations analysis, but the result of this monopoly is painfully obvious with the loss of data on Recovery.gov.
Cheers,
Kiley
Earlier this week the Sunlight Foundation posted a rather interesting piece that may be of interest to those of you that use Duns & Bradstreet data. In case you're unfamiliar, the Sunlight Foundation is, "a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. We do so by creating tools, open data, policy recommendations, journalism and grant opportunities to dramatically expand access to vital government information to create accountability of our public officials."
I'd love to hear your thoughts should you have any to share. Randy Cohen - that means you ;)
Time to be done with DUNS
On Sept. 9, the Washington Post reported that Recovery.gov, the website that provides oversight for federally distributed funds, would soon be losing a significant amount of data. Why? Because the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board which operates the site can’t afford to renew its yearly $1.5 million dollar license with Duns & Bradstreet: the only firm authorized to assign ID numbers to entities doing business with the federal government. In 2012, the General Services Administration expressed its concern with this lack of competition and has been looking into alternatives. Meanwhile, there are a number of efforts to change this system, and the requirements under the DATA Act provide an opportunity for this change. At a town hall discussion hosted by the Treasury Department, we urged the federal government to “dump DUNS” and find a more open and transparent way of tracking the entities with which it does business. We previously explained the problems associated with highly restrictive identifying systems in our 6 Degrees of Corporations analysis, but the result of this monopoly is painfully obvious with the loss of data on Recovery.gov.
Cheers,
Kiley
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