What OFN is
OFN — Otevřená formální norma, an "open formal standard" — is a machine-readable specification for describing a company's complete ownership and control structure, from the registered entity down to the natural-person Beneficial owner skutečný majitel The natural person who ultimately owns or controls a company, even through a chain of other entities.. It is published as open data under the Czech OFN framework (Act No. 106/1999 Coll., §3a) and the data.gov.cz vocabulary.
Why open and machine-readable
Because the data is a structured standard rather than prose or PDFs, it can be reproduced, queried, and cross-checked by anyone, with no lock-in. That is also what EU open-data rules require for company-ownership data (see EU obligations, below).
The data model at a glance
Every record decomposes into two parts: the subjects — the entities and people involved — and the relationships between them. Both derive from a common root type carrying a stable identifier and created / invalidated timestamps, so a record's history can be reconstructed.
Subjects: the taxonomy
Subjects are classified by how they exert control: those that control through a share (podílové), those that control without one — a board seat, management, or other decisive influence (bezpodílové), significant non-controlling holders (25% and above), and authorised representatives (pověření). Each is one of four entity types: a natural person (fyzická osoba — the skutečný majitel), a company (právnická osoba), a legal arrangement such as a trust (právní uspořádání), or a public body (veřejnoprávní entita). The 25% significant-holding threshold comes from the AMLR (Art. 52(1)).
{
"id": "person/jan-novak",
"type": "fyzicka_osoba",
"role": "skutecny_majitel",
"relationship": { "kind": "control", "basis": "share", "share": 0.62, "path": "indirect" }
}Relationships: direct, indirect, joint
Relationships are first-class and reified, so each can carry its own attributes. They are direct (přímé) or indirect (nepřímé — chains, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous), and may be joint where parties act in concert (spolujednání).
The three dimensions of credibility
Every subject and relationship carries a credibility rating along three axes: scope (rozsahová — how much of the structure is verified), documentary (dokladová — what evidence backs it), and temporal (časová — how current it is). Verification is planned to record these on acceptance; consumers can weight data by them.
Mapping to EU high-value-dataset obligations
Company ownership is listed as a high-value dataset under the Open Data Directive (2019/1024) and its Implementing Regulation (2023/138, Annex §5.1), which require it to be published in a standard, machine-readable, freely reusable form. OFN is how Eurcor meets that obligation. See Legal framework for the full basis.