Jane Edwards
A new report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Data Foundation says the U.S. government should advance the universal entity identification process through the adoption of a unique identifier to facilitate verification of businesses, nonprofit institutions and other organizations.
LexisNexis and Data Foundation interviewed 17 government, industry and tech professionals for the report and respondents said agencies should adopt the Legal Entity Identifier as an alternative to proprietary identifier codes that limit access to data through procurement of licenses, the company said Wednesday.
LEI is a non-proprietary standard identification code that requires organizations to register once and use the same unique identifier with other entities.
The report said approximately 500,000 organizations worldwide have registered to use LEI and that the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission became the first U.S. agency to require use of the identification code.
“Inconsistent and various proprietary entity identifiers continue to lock up mountains of government data,†said Scott Straub, director of federal market strategy at LexisNexis Risk Solutions and the report’s co-author.
Straub added the adoption of LEI in the U.S. would provide agencies, companies and watchdogs greater data access at reduced costs.
Click here to view the full list of interviewees for the report.
