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FIRMBACKBONE has been included in a list of initiatives to promote data provisioning for the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)-domain. The permanent funding is a huge step in becoming the source for researchers on Dutch company data. FIRMBACKBONE provides a secure infrastructure of organic growth; researchers can add their own data.

The FIRMBACKBONE infrastructure is a collaboration between Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and provides data on all organisations with legal status listed in the Netherlands, ranging from single owner to publicly traded companies, but also foundations and all other forms that are registered by the Chamber of Commerce. These data are published in DataverseNL and aim FAIRness while using restricted access to sensitive data. 

FIRMBACKBONE provides detailed administrative, employment and financial data for these organisations on the establishment level. There are also indicators added to the data based on the organisation’s website text. In the future the goal is to make is possible for researchers to work with these texts. The combination of these different sources allows for many research opportunities. To ensure flexibility and organic growth, researchers are able to contribute and combine their own data to the infrastructure, expanding the research opportunities even further.

Access to the data is available for researchers who are employed by departments or faculties that are part of the ODISSEI consortium. Researchers access the data through the Secure Analysis Environment (SANE), an initiative by ODISSEI and SURF. The environment is closed to the internet, but allows researchers to work with R and Python via a terminal service.