Governance and development¶
The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) is developed by Open Ownership, a non-profit organisation focused on beneficial ownership transparency, in partnership with Open Data Services.
Development of BODS responds to the evolving needs of those collecting, sharing and using beneficial ownership data.
As work continues towards a version 1.0, the processes by which BODS is governed and developed will be updated by Open Ownership and Open Data Services in consultation with the Data Standard Working Group.
Full details about these processes will be kept up-to-date in the BODS development handbook.
Feature requests and bug reports¶
To suggest changes or fixes, submit a BODS feature request or bug report via the issue templates available in the BODS GitHub repository.
Open Ownership and Open Data Services will respond to all community feature requests or bug reports via comments on the Github issue.
Feature development¶
To lay out a proposed feature for development or to expand on a community-submitted feature, Open Ownership and Open Data Services use feature development tickets.
Feature development tickets are problem statements: they focus on the user-need gaps in BODS which potentially need to be filled. Current open feature development tickets are listed on the BODS feature tracker and new ones will first be added to the backlog. Once a ticket is actively being researched or worked on, it will be moved to the Research stage.
Once the user needs for a new feature in BODS have been described in a feature development ticket, proposals can be made about how to implement the feature. Currently Open Ownership and Open Data Services use GitHub Discussions to get feedback about implementation proposals.
If broad consensus about whether or not to proceed with implementation as laid out in the proposal can’t be reached, the decision should be postponed.
Release tracking¶
For each new version of BODS, Open Ownership and Open Data Services will create a release tracker as a project of the Open Ownership GitHub team to capture the features, bug fixes, changes and updates being made in the new version. Here is the release tracker for BODS version 0.4.
Data Standard Working Group¶
The Data Standard Working Group brings together in-country, technical and data experts to help shape the development of BODS as well as driving adoption of the standard internationally.
This working group is open to all and includes stakeholders from a range of backgrounds with an interest and expertise in data relating to corporate control or beneficial ownership, and to the use of such data in the public interest.
Membership of the working group is voluntary. Anyone can apply to join the group by filling out this form after reading the terms of reference. Virtual group meetings are held quarterly and communication is coordinated through a Google group. Members are encouraged to respond to issues via GitHub or email.