Contributing

The org-id.guide list is maintained by a coalition of open data standards: and is open to contributions and requests from users of any of those standards.

Note

We use GitHub as our issue tracker and to manage the register. If you don’t get have a GitHub account, you can sign-up for free at https://github.com.

Suggesting additions and changes

You can suggest updates to org-id.guide in a number of ways.

1. Requesting a new entry

When you have an organization or organizations you want to provide an identifier for - but you can’t find any official identifier source, you can post a ‘REQUESTED’ issue.

This should contain details about the organization(s) you want to identify including:

  • The legal form (charity, company, government agency); and

  • The country they are registered in;

Any additional information you can provide about this kind of organization in this country (e.g. if you know anything more detailed about the legal regime for such organizations), or about your need for identifiers (e.g. do you need it to be linked to particular kinds of open data) will help the research process.

Requests from org-id.guide members will be prioritised for a response by the research team.

We encourage community members to also get involved in providing suggestions for appropriate lists in response to a request.

2. Proposing a new entry

When you have identified a list that should be included in org-id.guide, you can post a ‘PROPOSAL’ issue, or submit a pull-request with a fully-researched list.

When submitting a PROPOSAL, please include:

  • The open data standard your request relates to (e.g. ‘OCDS’, ‘BODS’, ‘360Giving’ etc.)

  • The name of the list (or the organization that manages the list)

  • A short description of the list

  • The country or countries that the list covers

  • The legal form or organizations that the list covers

  • Any specific sectors that the list covers

  • A URL for information on the list, and a URL for looking up identifiers (if available)

  • Any information on available open data copies of this list

Most importantly, please provide at least one example of an organization identified by the list, along with the example identifier, and information on how this was obtained.

For example, in some cases, where there is no public database of identifiers, identifiers are found by asking an organization for a copy of their certificate of registration.

3. Proposing a correction or update

If you can provide additional information, or want to suggest an update to an entry in org-id.guide, open an issue or pull-request with your suggested changes.

Include details of the entry you are proposing an update for, and links to any sources from your research.

What happens with suggestions

Requests are prioritised, and passed to our research team to identify potential lists. They will keep the GitHub issue updated with their research. If/when they identify an appropriate list, they populate the list meta-data needed to create a proposal.

Proposals are reviewed by the research team to check that all the key stages from the research guide have been covered and that all the required meta-data is provided. A new list entry is created using the list schema and a pull-request created. Once the pull-request is open:

  • The list can be previewed and is staged for inclusion in org-id.guide

  • There is a 7-day period for comments and feedback to either improve the meta-data, or raise any questions about inclusion of this list in the register;

  • If no blocking concerns have been raised by org-id.guide members, or wider community contributors, during this period, the list is added to the org-id.guide register;

Updates are reviewed by the research team. Minor updates are merged without going through the full 7-day review period. Major updates will be treated as proposals.

Deprecations will be handled based on active consensus rather than the lazy consensus (information) process used for new list proposals.

Process transparency

Transparency is an essential principle for governance of org-id.guide. All decisions are made in the open, and are managed through the git version control system and open issues.