A country can score well in an international index while a journalist, creditor or investigator still struggles to obtain a usable company file. The apparent contradiction often disappears once the measure is read correctly: rankings capture defined indicators at a particular time, while on-the-ground access depends on cost, identity rules, search design, language, delays and actual administrative practice.
Read the methodology before the score
Identify exactly what the ranking measures, who supplied the data, the reference period, weighting, geographic coverage and confidence limits. Some indices measure laws on the books; others use expert perceptions, government questionnaires or selected outcomes. None should be relabelled as a universal transparency score.
Transparency International explains that its Corruption Perceptions Index is limited to expert and business perceptions of public-sector corruption. It is not a direct test of whether a particular registry document can be downloaded, understood or used as evidence.
Likewise, a change in rank may result from other countries moving, a source being added or a small score movement. Compare the underlying score and methodology across years rather than treating rank alone as a trend.
Separate legal availability from practical access
For the record being investigated, test the complete user journey. Can an outsider search without a local identity number? Does the search require the exact spelling or company number? Are historical filings, shareholder changes, accounts and document images included? Record fees, payment methods, captcha failures, opening hours, response time, file format and language.
A register may be public but not searchable by director or beneficial owner. Information may be available only at a physical office, through a licensed intermediary or after a justified request. Privacy safeguards can be legitimate, but they change what different users can obtain.
These limitations are why public registries cannot be treated as complete control maps. Absence from a public search may mean the field is restricted, not collected, indexed differently or available only to competent authorities.
Test timeliness, completeness and usability
Run standard tasks and record the result: retrieve the current company profile, reconstruct a past ownership chain, obtain the latest accounts, identify filing dates and locate the authority responsible for corrections. Repeat the test with a second researcher where possible.
Check whether data are machine-readable, whether downloads contain stable identifiers and whether amended filings remain visible. A portal that publishes scans can satisfy formal disclosure while making large-scale comparison difficult. Conversely, an API may be technically open but too stale or incomplete for a time-sensitive investigation.
For cross-border work, assess name transliteration, local entity types and links between national systems. Our guide to weaknesses in cross-border information sharing explains why authority-to-authority access and public access should be measured separately.
Compare rules with effectiveness
International assessment systems increasingly distinguish formal compliance from results. FATF says its mutual evaluations contain separate technical-compliance and effectiveness components because laws alone do not show that a system works. Even those ratings are scoped to anti-money-laundering outcomes; they are not a general customer-service score for every registry.
A useful local test asks whether accurate information is collected, verified, updated and supplied promptly to the users entitled to it. For beneficial ownership, compare registry output with corporate documents, accounts, licences and transaction evidence using the ownership-verification workflow.
Document the real access gap
Create an access log with the requested record, user category, legal entitlement, steps attempted, date, cost, result and evidence. Save screenshots of error messages, receipts and correspondence. Distinguish a temporary outage from a structural restriction and an unanswered request from a formal refusal.
Malta News Online’s report on the Toni Abela contract and Malta’s freedom-of-information framework illustrates how a document can remain inaccessible because the body holding it falls outside the relevant route or the requested authority says it does not possess it. The report is a case-specific secondary source; the decision and governing law remain the primary evidence.
Interview affected users only after documenting the process. Journalists, lawyers, civil-society groups, regulated firms and ordinary citizens may have different permissions and technical capabilities. Their experiences are valuable, but the sample and role must be stated.
Report rankings and access side by side
A defensible comparison states what the index measures, its year and limitations, then reports the tested access outcome for a named record and user type. Avoid saying that a ranking is “wrong” when it answers a different question.
The practical conclusion may be that a jurisdiction has strong formal rules but costly public access, good current data but weak history, effective authority access but limited public inspection, or an accessible portal containing unverified declarations. Those distinctions show decision-makers exactly what needs improvement and give investigators a realistic view of the evidence they can obtain.