A Digital Public Good · Hosted by Bellona Foundation, Norway
The data SMEs need already exists. They just can’t reach it.
SME Data Unlock is an open-source initiative that connects small and medium enterprises to the sustainability data already sitting inside government registries, regulators, and utility systems — and turns it into the reporting and financing access they've been locked out of.
What It Is — Government-Backed Data Exchange, Built as Public Infrastructure
SME Data Unlock is a global open-source initiative, launched in Norway and hosted by the Bellona Foundation, that gives SMEs a click-of-a-button path to the sustainability data they need to compete in demanding markets.
Rather than asking each business to assemble reporting data from scratch, government-supported Data Exchange Platforms retrieve it directly from the public and regulated systems that already hold it — utility companies, environmental agencies, and regulatory authorities — and convert it into machine-readable formats aligned with global standards.
The platform's code base and trust framework are released as a Digital Public Good, free for governments and institutions anywhere to adopt and adapt — with a deliberate first focus on Emerging and Developing Economies, where the data barrier is highest and the stakes are greatest.
What SMEs Get
Access, not paperwork.
Lower cost, less burden
Automated retrieval replaces the manual scramble to answer every buyer's and regulator's reporting request in its own format.
Capital starts moving
Verified data unlocks grants, loans, and financing for energy efficiency, renewables, and clean transport — and keeps SMEs inside global supply chains.
Contracts within reach
Where climate and sustainability data now factor into procurement decisions, SMEs can finally show up with the evidence to compete for them.
See how the platform works
From one-time consent to a finance-ready report — explore the four-step model behind SME Data Unlock.
Thank you to the Bon Conseil team for their generous pro bono support in designing this site.
Why Now
Regulation moved faster than infrastructure — and SMEs are the ones absorbing the gap.
Global Drivers
This isn't a motivation problem. SMEs want to participate in the green economy — and increasingly have no choice but to try. The barriers are structural:
Data Infrastructure Gap
SMEs lack automated, low-burden tools to collect, verify, and share the sustainability data that global financial systems and supply chains now demand.
Regulatory Pressure
Frameworks like the EU's CSRD, CBAM, SEEA, and EPR cascade reporting obligations down to LMIC SME suppliers, creating immediate risk of market exclusion.
Data Fragmentation
Utility, GHG, and environmental data sits in siloed systems, with no unified, machine-readable layer connecting performance to compliance.
Absent Infrastructure
Existing standards define what the data should look like, but not how it gets collected, verified, or delivered affordably. No open platform serves SMEs at this scale — anywhere.
Use cases — regions:
Why This Matters Now
Sustainability data demands are converging on SMEs from every direction. Small and medium enterprises account for around 90% of businesses worldwide, and a major share of employment and growth — yet they are the least equipped to absorb repeated, bespoke sustainability reporting burdens.
| Driver | What it demands |
|---|---|
| CSRD and ESRS requirements, including value chain, product passports, and Scope 3 data | |
| Detailed ESG information required to remain inside supply chains | |
| Evidence required for green lending and sustainable finance | |
| Data-heavy eligibility criteria under product passport regimes |
The same underlying data — energy use, water, waste, emissions — is already held in authoritative public and regulated systems, and is being requested of SMEs repeatedly, from four directions at once. If clean water can reach every business through shared pipes and standards, sustainability data should too.
Letter from the Founders
By Liv Apneseth Watson and Catherine Atkin, Co-Founders, SME Data Unlock
Over the past few years, we have engaged with global thought leaders, government leaders, open data experts, scientists, and businesses of all sizes to explore how open-source infrastructure solutions can support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across the world. Specifically, we are focused on developing open-source APIs that leverage existing data, much of it already sitting in public registries that is often collected once and never reused. Increasingly, this data is subject to emerging global regulatory mandates aimed at significantly reducing the reporting burden on SMEs in the data-driven green transition and circular economy.
We believe SME Data Unlock is one of the most important open-source infrastructure solutions for the green transition, not because it introduces something new, but because it stops us from asking SMEs to produce something that, in large part, already exists.
Across Europe and beyond, small and medium enterprises are being asked to report on sustainability, emissions, and supply chain impacts under frameworks like CSRD, VSME, and CBAM, often for the first time and without the staff or systems that larger companies take for granted. For a small manufacturer in Montenegro or a family-owned bakery in Norway, this can mean weeks of manual work chasing figures that a government registry, a utility provider, or a customs authority already holds. The burden isn't the reporting requirement itself, it's the redundancy. Every additional form, every duplicated data request, quietly weighs against the very SMEs that the green transition most needs to bring along.
Our combined experience in global open-standard development, climate-policy implementation, and cross-sector data governance has taught us that infrastructure choices shape participation. When reporting systems privilege organizations with dedicated ESG teams and costly compliance stacks, they hard-code exclusion into the transition. A truly green transition requires infrastructure that lowers barriers, aligns with authoritative data sources, and distributes trust rather than concentrating it.
SME Data Unlock exists to change that calculus. Our architecture is simple to describe and hard-won in practice: capture once, reuse many times. Instead of asking an SME to re-key data it has already reported elsewhere, our open-source infrastructure pulls from existing public registries and consent-based sources, structures it using open standards like XBRL, and makes it available for whatever is needed: sustainability disclosure, a financing application, or a supply chain request. No SME should have to prove the same data point twice.
This only works as open, public-good infrastructure. A green transition built on proprietary, walled-off data platforms will always privilege those who can afford access. We have chosen instead to build with a founding alliance of mission-driven partners including our host The Bellona Foundation, XBRL International, and the Adria Future Foundation to prove the model with real SMEs, in real markets.
We are under no illusion that this is easy. Regulatory landscapes are fragmented, registries don't talk to one another, and trust in data infrastructure has to be earned, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, institution by institution. But we have also seen what's possible when open standards and open data infrastructure are allowed to work in the background as machine-readable financial reporting went from a niche idea to a global norm underpinning capital markets today.
We invite stakeholders - governments, development finance institutions, standard-setters, and SMEs themselves - to build this with us. The green transition will not be won by asking small businesses to do more with less. It will be won by giving SMEs access to their data.
Liv Apneseth Watson & Catherine Atkin
Co-Founders, SME Data Unlock
Meet the Team
Role
Liv A. Watson
Co-Founder
Tap to read bioLiv A. Watson
Co-founder, SME Data Unlock. Co-founder of XBRL International and the Global Digital Single Market Data Alliance; Senior Fellow, Data Foundation & Bellona Foundation. 25+ years advancing financial and sustainability reporting standards, including leadership roles at Workiva; author, XBRL for Dummies and The Governance, Risk and Compliance Handbook.
LinkedIn ↗Catherine Atkin
Co-Founder
Tap to read bioCatherine Atkin
Co-founder, SME Data Unlock. Climate attorney and Stanford CodeX Fellow; co-founder of the Global Digital Single Market Data Alliance; Senior Fellow, Bellona Foundation.
LinkedIn ↗Jon Apneseth
Team
Tap to read bioJon Apneseth
[Role / bio to be added]
LinkedIn: [add URL]Dag Drevvatne
Team
Tap to read bioDag Drevvatne
[Role / bio to be added]
LinkedIn: [add URL]Biljana Braithwaite
Regional Lead
Tap to read bioBiljana Braithwaite
Regional Lead, Western Balkans.
LinkedIn: [add URL]Goran
Regional Lead
Tap to read bioGoran
Regional Lead, Western Balkans.
LinkedIn: [add URL]Urmish Mehta
Regional Lead
Tap to read bioUrmish Mehta
Regional Lead, MENA Region. Sustainability and Business Transformation Expert.
LinkedIn ↗Tanuj Agarwal
Regional Lead
Tap to read bioMark Brits
Advisor
Tap to read bioWilliam Gee
Advisor
Tap to read bioWilliam Gee
[Role / bio to be added]
LinkedIn: [add URL]Jane Diplock
Advisor
Tap to read bioJane Diplock
Chair of the Global Reporting Initiative Supervisory Board; former Chair of IOSCO.
LinkedIn ↗Eugene Montoya
Advisor
Tap to read bioEugene Montoya
Climate risk and sustainable finance professional; board member and Treasurer of the Waterfront Alliance.
LinkedIn ↗Chris Dreyer
Advisor
Tap to read bioChris Dreyer
[Role / bio to be added]
LinkedIn: [add URL]Cathrine Armour
Advisor
Tap to read bioCathrine Armour
Global Director of Data Initiatives at the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
LinkedIn ↗Katherine Foster
Advisor
Tap to read bioKatherine Foster
Strategy Advisor at The Digital Economist and former Chief Intelligence Officer of the Green Digital Finance Alliance.
LinkedIn ↗The Solution
Government-Backed SME Data Exchange Platforms
Open-source APIs expose authoritative data through standardized, interoperable interfaces that map directly to SME reporting schemas, so firms no longer need to manually rebuild information already stored across regulatory, banking, and utility systems.
Connect at source
Authoritative data, accessed directly. Utilities, water authorities, environmental agencies, and other public systems are made accessible through secure, open-source APIs.
Consent-based access
SMEs decide who sees their data — regulators, banks, customers, or partners — and control how it's reused.
Structured & interoperable
Data is converted into machine-readable formats aligned with global digital reporting standards, including XBRL and EFRAG's SME sustainability standards.
Collect once, use many
One trusted dataset is reused across multiple reporting requirements, cutting cost and complexity at the source.
Built as a Digital Public Good: the standardized codebase and trust frameworks behind these platforms are developed open source, for adaptation across both emerging and developing economies and advanced economies alike — positioning Norway's digitalization leadership, and its experience with trusted infrastructure such as Altinn, as a foundation the world can build on.
How We Work
A country-tailored implementation model.
How We Work — A Country-Tailored Implementation Model
SME Data Unlock is not a one-size-fits-all blueprint. Every implementation is grounded in open standards and open source, and built with the institutions that already hold the data.
Convene a public–private consortium
Relevant ministries, regulators, utilities, statistical offices, environmental agencies, SMEs, banks, and standards bodies are brought to the same table.
Bring in global and local experts
Specialists in sustainability reporting, XBRL, open data, and digital public infrastructure work alongside national experts to design fit-for-purpose solutions.
Co-design local Data Exchange Platforms
Architectures adapted to national legal, technical, and market contexts, while maintaining alignment with EFRAG SME standards and global interoperability.
Develop open-source, vendor-neutral infrastructure
Code, taxonomies, and trust frameworks released under open licenses, for transparency, reuse, and long-term resilience.
Pilot with real SMEs and real data
Early pilots focus on tangible use cases — green lending, supply chain reporting, procurement — so the benefits are immediate.
The SME Data Roadmap
The SME Data Roadmap
Governance and neutrality span all phases — not just Phase 1. The roadmap sets out how SME Data Unlock moves from a governance framework to a live, shared data infrastructure, in eight phases grouped into four stages.
Phase 1 — Foundation
Objective: create trust, neutrality, and legitimacy before anything gets built.
- Designate a neutral convenor — Bellona Foundation serves as the neutral facilitator, with no commercial stake in the outcome.
- Technical Scope Analysis — a formal scoping document defining what the platform will and won't cover.
- Establish a National Steering Committee across SMEs, funders, suppliers, buyers, authorities, and standards experts.
- Charter and governance set early: open-source by default, vendor-neutral, SME-first, privacy- and consent-driven.
- Initial funding, market engagement, and a feasibility study running alongside a first-country pilot prototype.
Outputs: Governance charter · Roles and decision framework · Trust and neutrality principles
Phase 2 — Public Alignment
Objective: government dialogue and support.
- Engage relevant national ministries, innovation agencies, and government bodies.
- Position the initiative as pre-competitive national infrastructure — not a vendor product.
- Secure seed funding for standards development, the pilot, and SME onboarding.
Outputs: Public backing · Seed funding · Policy alignment
Phase 3 — Use-Case Definition
Objective: establish what data actually matters.
- Run SME workshops across sectors to surface real needs.
- Identify high-friction reporting requirements and duplicate data requests.
- Prioritise financing, supplier, and sustainability use cases.
Outputs: Use-case map · SME value proposition
Phase 4 — Metadata Framework
Objective: interoperability, not duplication.
- Structured dialogue with authorities holding water, utility, statistical, and environmental data.
- Define shared metadata standards and reference models.
- Enable linking SME data directly with existing public datasets.
Outputs: Metadata principles · Reference architecture
Phase 5 — SME XBRL Taxonomy
Objective: a common SME reporting language.
- Develop an open SME XBRL taxonomy, aligned with the EFRAG XBRL SME Standard.
- Keep it modular, scalable, and appropriately scoped for SME use — not a cut-down enterprise taxonomy.
- Validate the taxonomy directly with SMEs and funders before finalizing.
Outputs: Open SME taxonomy · EFRAG alignment mapping
Phase 6 — Pilot Build
Objective: move from theory to practice.
- Build a lightweight, open reference pilot.
- Prove the "capture once, reuse many times" model with real data flows.
- Test with real SMEs, funders, and suppliers — not simulated data.
Outputs: Working pilot · Real data flows · Lessons learned
Phase 7 — Engagement
Objective: unlock capital.
- Bring banks, investors, and public funders to the table.
- Align on minimum viable datasets funders will actually accept.
- Secure commitments to reuse standardised SME data, rather than requesting bespoke formats.
Outputs: Aligned funder requirements · Reduced SME reporting burden
Phase 8 — Data Sharing
Objective: SME control and trust, at scale.
- Define consent-based data-sharing processes.
- Support sharing with both internal stakeholders and external partners.
Illustrative Use Case · Nordfjord Subsea Services AS, Stavanger
Norway
“The sustainability data SMEs need already exists — they just need access to it.”
Download Full PDF ↓
Illustrative Use Case · Furna Metali DOO, Podgorica
Montenegro
“The sustainability data SMEs need already exists — they just need access to it.”
Download Full PDF ↓
Illustrative Use Case · Regal Plus, Bur Dubai Branch
UAE
“The sustainability data SMEs need already exists — they just need access to it.”
Download Full PDF ↓
Illustrative Use Case · Bergslagen Svets & Industriservice AB, Borlänge
Sweden
“The sustainability data SMEs need already exists — they just need access to it.”
Download Full PDF ↓
Get Involved
Help build the open-source data infrastructure that lets SMEs participate in the green transition.
SME Data Unlock is a small, mission-driven team working at the intersection of open-source engineering, sustainability policy, and public-interest data infrastructure. We're not hiring against a fixed list of roles right now — we're building out the founding team as funding and partnerships come online.
Where We Could Use Help
Engineering & Data
Open-source platform engineers, taxonomy/data-mapping specialists, and XBRL/reporting-standards experts.
Policy & Government Relations
People who can work with ministries, regulators, and public digital-infrastructure providers on consent frameworks and interoperability standards.
Country & Partnership Leads
On-the-ground leads for pilot countries who can build relationships with SMEs, banks, and utilities.
Communications & Fundraising
People who can tell this story to funders, governments, and the press, and help build the SME Data Unlock Alliance.
If one of these sounds like you — or you think there's a role we haven't thought of yet — we'd like to hear from you.
How to Reach Us
Send a note with your background and what you're interested in to catherine@bellona.no · liv@bellona.no.
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