Open Supply Hub was deliberately built as an open data platform, to ensure that any organization who needs to share or search supply chain data can do so in a free and accessible tool.
The Goal: Open up supply chain data for the benefit of all, by creating a tool that allows any organization with data about supply chain facilities or sites to upload it to the platform. This then means that when you search or download data in the tool, you can see all the organizations who have shared data about and are connected to a particular facility, enabling collaboration across organizations, regions and sectors.
What is open data?
According to the Open Knowledge Foundation: Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose.
There are three important principles of open data that make it so powerful:
- Availability and access: that people can get the data
- Re-use and redistribution: that people can reuse and share the data
- Universal participation: that anyone can use the data
Is that different from open source?
Open source refers to opening up the code written to build a platform. OS Hub is also open source: all the code written to develop, fix and grow OS Hub is available for anyone to view on our GitHub repository and licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.
Where does this open data in OS Hub come from?
Data in OS Hub is uploaded by stakeholders across sectors and supply chains, including brands and retailers, civil society, multi-stakeholder initiatives, certification schemes, factory groups and more. In addition to these data contributions, the OS Hub team regularly accesses publicly available datasets and uploads them to the tool.
Data Owners
Any organization connected to a facility can share name and address data for that facility to OS Hub, whether it’s a:
- Brand
- Civil society organization
- Multi-stakeholder initiative
- Third party service provider
- Facility / factory group
Users can contribute this data for free by a manual CSV or Excel file upload, or via our paid-for API connection.
Public Datasets
Users filtering a search of OS Hub by Data Contributor will note that some entries include the caveat [Public List]. This means that list has been uploaded to the tool by the OS Hub team.
Organizations are notified when their data has been added to the tool and offered the opportunity to take over management of that dataset. Spotted your data in the tool as a [Public List]? Contact the team to take over management of it, or schedule a call to find out more. ️
Claimed Facilities
Owners or senior management of facilities are able to search OS Hub, claim their facility and, following a short confirmation process, add additional data points to their profile. These data points include number of workers, parent company, production type, MOQs, lead times and more. Learn more about OS Hub’s Claim a Facility feature.
Verified Sources with Attributable Data
Publicly available data forms the backbone of the OS Hub database and the OS Hub team strives to keep the database as current and accurate as possible, uploading new public lists on a regular basis.
Some users have requested the ability to upload and view attributable data on OS Hub. In this scenario, an organization would upload a list attributable to another organization and, in some cases, this data would be historical data, current to a previous year.
In order to establish a robust mechanism for determining the veracity and origin of data contributed to the tool by one organization, but attributed to another (e.g. a media outlet or civil society organization uploading brand data to the tool), OS Hub has developed a Verified Sources and Attributable Data Policy.