By
Friedrich Lindenberg
How can online research tools aid the
work of investigative reporters and others looking into transnational financial
flows, corporate structures and other illicit activities of organized crime and
global business?
Google and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
brought together a small group of investigative journalists and technologists
from around the world to examine the answers to this question at their first Investigathon in London last month.
While Google staff demonstrated how to
use some of their tools, such as Image Search and Fusion Tables, the star of the event was the Investigative Dashboard, a project of OCCRP
developed by investigative journalist Paul Radu and media strategist Justin Arenstein. The platform connects
journalists investigating transnational stories with researchers who are
familiar with a particular geographic region. These researchers then retrieve
information about companies or individuals from local registries and databases.
Dashboard-inspired group work sessions
at the Investigathon highlighted the importance of data from company registries
and official gazettes in investigative journalism. Knowing which companies
share board members or have subsidiaries in other countries is crucial to
understanding potential conflicts of interest--and potentially dodgy business
schemes.
The workshop highlighted the need for
newsrooms to put this data on companies and control structures into context,
alongside other evidence, over the course of an investigation. While such data
are available in a globally consolidated form through paid services, few
investigative reporters or news outlets are able to afford their steep fees.
OpenCorporates, an open
data-powered alternative, makes data freely available, but the start-up doesn't
yet cover all jurisdictions of interest. And while OpenCorporates, and other
sites such as the OffshoreLeaks database, OpenSpending
and OpenSecrets increasingly offer newsworthy data
for reporters to mine, there needs to be another, investigation-specific layer
on top of these sites.
Such a layer of tools would combine
data about persons and companies from public data platforms with other evidence
that research uncovers. This layer would also store information about the
source and reliability of the data, and allow journalists to analyze the
combined dataset to discover signs of illicit or illegal behavior.
While such tools for integrating and
analyzing investigative evidence are available for those with deep pockets,
there is also a need for an open source solution. This is why one of the goals
of my ICFJ Knight International Journalism
Fellowship is to build out grano, a toolkit for
investigative journalists.
Starting with an influence-mapping
tool, similar to Poderopedia and LittleSis, our first goal
is to create an involuntary face book of the companies, people and institutions
of interest to journalistic investigations.
Once that basic infrastructure is
matured, we want to take the step from making a database to making a workbench.
grano will help investigators create a coherent representation of their
investigations, by combining data from public sources with the evidence they
have collected themselves. This will create both an analytical tool and a
re-usable memory, either to be shared within institutions or even in public.
As a first prototype, we're building
out connectedAfrica, which we'll launch in South Africa. This collaboration
between the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting
(ANCIR) and the Institute for Security Studies will begin by
providing a public database focused on South Africa's top politicians,
detailing their business and political involvements. Our goal is to give users
a way to explore connections between individuals, companies and public
institutions, and to analyze the network for signs of dodgy behavior.
Based on the feedback from this
experiment, we're hoping to turn grano into a product that can support users
who want to create similar structures for their own investigations - whether
they are looking at company networks, political finance, government licensing,
procurement, court cases, policy making -- or the all of these combined.
How do you think such tools might
support your investigative reporting? Please share your thoughts in the
comments.
Friedrich Lindenberg is an ICFJ Knight
International Journalism Fellow who works with journalists and watchdog
organizations to develop data resources and investigative tools.
Global media innovation coverage
related to the projects and partners of the ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellows on IJNet
is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and edited
by Jennifer Dorroh.
Photo of Paul Radu at Investigathon
courtesy of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Source: Ijnet.org
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