In 2012, during discussions held with tax administration officials from CIAT member countries at a meeting sponsored by the German Cooperation in Lima, Peru, the following question was raised: Should a tax administration systematize the use of open sources of information?

This question gave rise, after a few years, to an initiative called DIP, which consists of facilitating access to open sources of information. On April 28, 2025, a new version was launched, called DIP+, which incorporates many of the lessons learned in recent years.

For a better understanding of this initiative, we will now describe the stages of development of DIP and the improvements incorporated in DIP+.

The first stage consisted of analyzing the feasibility or viability of DIP by determining whether there were sufficient open information sources of interest for the work of the tax administrations at the global regional level (Latin America). It has been difficult to determine with certainty the universe of available information. It was not easy for some tax administrations to identify useful open sources of information in their respective territories, especially in federal states, where different political subdivisions manage their respective sources of information. Even when evaluating the content of similar open sources in different subnational jurisdictions, there were asymmetries in data availability and access procedures. Nor was it easy for the CIAT Executive Secretariat to map relevant information sources for tax administrations in other regions. Despite the years that the CIAT Executive Secretariat has been working on DPI and the technology currently available (e.g., translation tools, Internet search engines, artificial intelligence, among others), identifying sources of information from other jurisdictions is still a difficult and time-consuming task. For example, the names of the information sources or organizations that manage them are not always intuitive and it is not easy to know the procedures for accessing the information or to know what data would be available if accessed.

Since 2013 CIAT has conducted exercises with tax administration officials and various organizations to access a significant sample of open sources of information, having identified a total of 375 sources from 51 countries and organizations. This demonstrates that there is indeed sufficient public information to support such an initiative and that the members of our network, made up mainly of tax administrations and complementary international agencies, NGOs, think tanks and tax organizations, are key to identifying, reporting and updating sources on a regular basis.

Among many others, we have identified open sources of information on:

• ♦ final beneficiaries.
• ♦ document validators.
• ♦ asset registries.
• ♦ records of tax defaulters.
• ♦ records of exporters and importers.
• ♦ freight records.
• ♦ catalogs of non-admitted tax schemes.
• ♦ records of companies.

The data or documents contained in these sources can be very useful for identifying individuals, understanding chains of ownership, evaluating risk profiles or catalogs, verifying the veracity of documents (e.g. invoices), evaluating transactions (e.g. freight) and, in general, individualizing subjects or transactions to comply with the principle of “foreseeable relevance” in the framework of the exchange of information upon request, under the terms established by the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information.

The second stage consisted of evaluating what added value could be provided to the tax administrations, beyond the mere identification of the aforementioned public sources. To this end, first, the possibility of creating structured databases with data from these sources was evaluated. This idea was discarded as a costly, complex and maintenance-intensive task. In addition, its scope would be limited because in some cases open sources are expensive, are only available in physical archives or require personal information to access them. The valid alternative was to carefully study each of the sources identified, with the aim of providing information that would allow the user to make informed decisions about the convenience of accessing a given source and, if necessary, to facilitate access to it. In this way it is possible to significantly reduce the time to identify, understand and access a source of information.

In this sense, for each source of information, the DIP+ user will find the following associated data:

• ♦ Organization that manages it.
• ♦ Access procedure.
• ♦ Data required for access.
• ♦ Cost of access.
• ♦ Type of data, fields, services or documents offered.
• ♦ Link or address where the information is available.

In a third stage, with the support of the Secretaria da Receita Federal do Brasil, a software program was created to systematize, in 2018, the sources of information identified.

Several tax administrations have been using this information, but there are still few that use it systematically in their processes.

In 2022, with the support of the German Cooperation (GIZ) and making use of new technologies, a new software was developed, which allowed us to create DIP+, which offers the following advantages to users:

• ♦ Multi-language environment (English, Spanish, Portuguese and French).
• ♦ Search criteria classified by country, region, type or subject of information and data source.
• ♦ Focus on information sources and the data, documents or services they provide.
• ♦ Interaction mechanisms to create a community of users who provide feedback, recommendations or experiences on the use of information sources.
• ♦ Updating information sources, which guarantees access to them, thanks to “robots” that periodically evaluate the functioning of links.

One of the major novelties, among those previously mentioned, lies in the possibility of searching for sources based on available data. We understand that tax administration users focus on searching for data, services (e.g., document validators) and documents rather than on the names of information sources. The latter could create false expectations. For example, a public company registry might offer in one country the name and identification number of a company, while in another it might additionally provide the number of employees, the share capital, the names of the partners and other data of interest.

With DIP+ we not only intend to provide tax administrations with a complementary tool to the information sources traditionally used by tax administrations, but we also intend to create a culture that contemplates the systematic use of public information that may be valuable and that for various reasons is underutilized.

If you are an official of a tax administration, we invite you to access DIP+ by following the procedure below:

1. Log on to http://dip.ciat.org.
2. If you are logging in for the first time, click on “request access” if you do not have a user.
3. Complete the registration form. It is important to use your institutional e-mail address as this will later become your username.
4. You will receive a message in your e-mail inviting you to generate a password. With this password you will be able to log into the system using the “Identify yourself” button on the home screen.
5. Once you log in with your username and password, you can search through the search engine; or by clicking “More options”, you can search by region, country, type of information or data.

NOTE: to optimize the search for information: DIP+ contains public information sources that have been identified as being of tax interest. It is not a database of data obtained from public sources. When using the search tools, it should be considered that the result will be a source of information with a detail of its operation and content, not its data.

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