the Panama Papers project is testament to the amazing global impact that graph database technology can have in the hands of investigative journalists

Wednesday, 08 March 2017

London, March 8, 2017 – Neo Technology, creator of the world’s leading graph database Neo4j, is delighted to announce that its customer The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has been honoured for its pioneering use of graph technology in supporting investigative journalism at Techworld’s The Techies 2017.

“We are thrilled at our win,” said Mar Cabra, ICIJ’s Data and Research Unit Editor.

“The sort of big, connected data investigation and the level of collaboration we achieved was simply not achievable without the help of technology. It’s a revolutionary discovery tool that’s transformed our investigative journalism process.

“Huge congratulations to all the data teams, reporters and editors in the ICIJ and its media partners whose commitment and ingenuity is exemplary, and to the Neo Technology team through their excellent technology and support.”

ICIJ won the Techies ‘Innovative Team of the Year’ award for its work on the Panama Papers project at Techworld's annual awards celebrating innovation, disruption and entrepreneurship across the UK technology scene.

ICIJ needed to analyse 2.6 terabytes of data in 11.5 million files while allowing a team of 400 journalists in 80 countries from over 100 media organisations to break the story in the largest data-driven collaborative journalism project carried out to date.

The ICIJ used an Open Source approach at the centre of which was graph database Neo4j as well as Linkurious data visualisation to model these enormous data sets and set up visualisations easy enough for non technology specialists to understand.

Thanks to its innovative use of technology, reporters on the Panama Papers could spot relationships and connections in the data. As a result, the investigation had one of the highest impacts a story has ever achieved in journalism, with more than 4,700 individual stories run by media partners around the globe.

In addition, the ICIJ’s work is encouraging an ongoing series of citizen journalism enquiries, with over 7 million members of the public empowered to interrogate 40 million pages since the May 2016 launch of its online public resource.

The future of investigative journalism lies in better working with data

“While there were many tools involved in the dissection and analysis of the Panama Papers, Neo4j's significance in the ultimate findings – with its ability to handle the large volume of data, graph the connections but remain accessible to journalists as an open source project – cannot be overstated,” confirms Stephen O’Grady, Industry Analyst at RedMonk.

“The future of investigative journalism is data, and the Panama Papers project is testament to the amazing global impact that graph database technology can have in the hands of investigative journalists,” added Emil Eifrem, CEO of Neo Technology.

“We are delighted at the ICIJ’s win. It’s fantastic what it achieved, and we are hugely proud to have powered the ground breaking investigation with our technology.”

Neo Technology is committed to using its technology for socially useful ends, and is partnering with investigative journalists across the world to assist them in their connected data investigation through its Journalism Accelerator programme. Get in touch for more details.

About Neo Technology

Neo Technology is the creator of Neo4j, world’s leading graph database. Neo4j is a highly scalable native graph database that leverages data relationships as first-class entities to help companies build intelligent applications that meet today's evolving connected data challenges including fraud detection, real-time recommendations, master data management, network security and IT operations.

Global enterprises like Walmart, UBS, Cisco, HP, adidas Group and Lufthansa and hot startups like Medium, Qualia and Glowbl rely on Neo4j to harness the connections in their data.

Neo Technology is privately held and funded by Eight Roads Ventures, Sunstone Capital, Conor Venture Partners, Creandum, Dawn Capital and now Greenbridge Investment Partners. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Neo Technology also has regional offices in Sweden, Germany and the UK. For more information, please visit Neo4j.com and @Neo4j.

All trademarks and registered trademarks, including Neo Technology® and Neo4j® are the property of their respective owners.

# # #

Media contacts:

Carina Birt
Sarum PR for Neo Technology UK
+44 (0) 7970 006624
carina@sarumpr.com