The multinational corporation has become one of the most powerful and influential forms of economic organisation in the modern world...Today we are publishing a new research report looking at the current state and future prospects of a global database on the economic activities and tax contributions of multinationals – including who might use it and how, what it could and should contain, the extent to which one could already start building such a database using publicly available sources, and next steps for policy, advocacy and technical work.  It also highlights what is involved in making of data about multinationals, including social and political processes of classification and standardisation that this data depends on...[I]t could be a means to facilitate the assembly and coordination of different actors who share an interest in the economic activities of multinationals.  It would thus be not only a source of information, but also a mechanism for organisation – allowing journalists, researchers, civil society organisations and others to collaborate...In parallel to ongoing campaigns for public data, a civil society database could thus be viewed as a kind of democratic experiment opening up space for public engagement, deliberation and imagination around how the global economy is organised, and how it might be organised differently...