The Open Data Standards Task Force: Knowledge-sharing and problem-solving in 2021

The Open Data Standards (ODS) Task Force continued its second year of engagement in 2021, convening data experts to discuss  legislative activity, how applied linguistics could clarify meanings and definitions in financial services, how investors are handling environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, the possible use of a National Secure Data Service for financial services research, and where open, standardized data are making gains. 

The ODS Task Force launched in 2020 and includes senior level experts and thought leaders from across government, businesses, non-profits, and academia. Co-chairs from Bloomberg and the Data Foundation organize members of the ODS Task Force to discuss topics related to open data, open source, open financial data, and common business identifiers, and common barriers that prevent change across the financial industry and amongst regulators with the aim to ultimately inform and provide guidance for industry and regulatory decision-makers on trends, best practices, and critical topics. 

Highlights from our 2021 meetings include:

• Legislative briefings on the Corporate Transparency Act (enacted January 2021), beneficial ownership, the Financial Transparency Act, which would update regulatory use of data standards and open data access among members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) 
• The potential use of applied linguistics in financial industry as a way to encourage meaning diversity and better clarity in the data and information regulators and industry work with as featured in the book, Understanding the Financial Industry Through Linguistics: How Applied Linguistics Can Prevent Financial Crisis 
• How a proposed National Secure Data Service could be useful to financial services and among regulators, like financial inclusion, data sharing to support anti-money laundering efforts and identifying terrorist funding, ESG data exchanges, etc. 
• Barriers to change and the use of machine-readable and open data 
• Signals from leadership at the Department of Treasury to prioritize data quality and key linkages for entity identification 
• Rising importance of ESG-identified data for investments and related challenges

The task force meetings provide members with a forum for candid discussion, collaboration, problem solving, and knowledge sharing. This past year we discussed multiple areas of change in the government and in the private sector. ODS Task Force members will build on our discussions and efforts of the past two years, working across the financial sector, with regulators, and the data community to build consensus for the use of open data standards.