Yesterday I heard about CorpWatch and Crocodyl.org from Tonya Hennessy and Lena Zuniga.
The Crocdyl tool shows how the big teeth of corporations lead down to small spiny tails in subsidiaries all over the world. It also seems very usable, though I have not dug in.
They are hoping that wiki-people from all over will participate by adding information on subsidiaries and corporate activity from all corners. But they also have a couple of cracker-jack researchers keeping up core profiles for about 50 corporations. Funding sources include Sunlight, of course …
From a Revenue Watch perspective, I wonder what the best use of a platform like this is. Corporate watchdogging is implied in much of RWI’s work, for instance in the participation of industry in EITI, or more explicitly in the PRT index we produced last year with Transparency International. But it is central to RWI’s mission primarily as part of “multistakeholder” efforts to create accountability at the government and corporate levels
The data that will mean the most to our users is about the movement of resources and payments, or the fluctuation of economic indicators like percentage of GDP from oil revenues, and how the changes in that number compare against changes in poverty indicators. And that means intensive research and keypunching. Something to look forward to taking on, with CorpWatch and others.