How open data came to safeguard Ukrainians

Opendatabot’s path to 1 million users

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How open data came to safeguard Ukrainians

The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine first opened its register in 2016. At the time, it was the Unified Business Register of Ukraine. Opendatabot was the first service to leverage the data and start notifying businesses about changes.

With a 1 million-strong user base and access to 16 essential open registers, Opendatabot helps protect businesses and real estate from illegal seizure, identify fraudsters, ensure children’s safety, and timely pay taxes.

Let’s dive into how Ukraine opens its data and Opendatabot uses it to safeguard businesses and the country’s residents.

Open USR protects from asset grabbing

Opendatabot’s history began with the opening of the Unified Business Register. We started tracking the changes in company registration details and notifying business owners and lawyers about them.

Since then, we have identified 450 deleted companies, notified our users about 526,147 changes, and managed to stop 5 illegal seizures in cooperation with company owners.

Now our users can access USR and real estate register data in real-time and timely react to alarming activity.

Kindergarten and school inspection for children’s safety

In 2018, business inspection data was published on the Inspection portal. The inspection data became available in Opendatabot with the cooperation of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO).

Now it enables parents to check daycare and education establishments for fire and sanitary safety violations and corrective measures taken to eliminate them.

Void and stolen passports, wanted person database for anti-fraud protection

The register of wanted persons was opened in 2017, and in June 2018 Ministry of Internal Affairs opened the data on void passports.

It was thus discovered that there were over 1.5 million void passports used in Ukraine, each potentially in the hands of fraudsters. Also, 43,000 people were wanted by the police.

The data comes in handy during the conclusion of contracts as a safeguard against fraud.

Vehicle register and registration certificate data for vehicle background check

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine released the data on vehicles and their owners in August 2018. Now Ukrainians can find out where and when any car was registered, its year of manufacture, and how many times it was re-registered. It’s a great way of checking the vehicle’s background when buying one.

Tax debt data for monitoring of businesses’ essential fiscal performance indicators

In November 2016, the government made the tax debt data public. Our users thus were enabled to keep tabs on their companies and business partners in this regard. Then, the single tax and VAT payer data was opened.

These are the businesses’ most important tax performance indicators. And this year, we have enabled individual entrepreneurs to pay taxes and submit reports to the State Tax Service online.