Why Open Contracting?

A range of benficiaries

Government:

seeking value

for money

Corruption hunter:

detecting fraud 

& corruption

SMEs:

competing for public

contracts

CSOs:

monitoring service

delivery

Why focus on contracting data?

Detecting patterns

Deeper insights

Linking aid data and contract register for greater project-level insight

Contracting analytics

http://procurement-analytics.org/

Contracting analytics

https://www.contrataciones.gov.py/datos/visualizaciones

Tools for contractors

But:

• Many current data-driven examples rely on proprietary data-sharing;
   
• Most existing tools are custom-build for one particular country or context;
   
• Where data is available, quality is often low;
   
• Many countries lack any good quality published procurement data, or only have data on one stage of the process;

A brief history

Built around data supply...

...and user need

Resulting in...

Field & identifier specifications

What to publish, and how to identify it consistently across the whole contracting process

JSON schema & flattened serialisations

How to publish data so that it can be read by different systems, and converted into accessible formats for different users. 

Publishing patterns

Stepping stones towards best practices for sharing data on the web: improving usability. 

1) Planning

2) Tender / formation

3) Enquiries

4) Award

5) Contract

6) Progress update

7) Contract ammendment

8) Completion

The pieces...

The contracting process

The contracting record

Releases and records

• Real-time notices and updates;
• As much information as the publishing system can share;
• Linked to a contracting process ID;

• Summarising the current state of the contracting process;
• Bringing together data from different systems;
• Providing change history;

Planning

Releases and records

Format & schema

Flat serialisation

OCID

Contracting process identifier

- Look for existing identifiers that join up the whole contracting process

Organisation identifiers

Master Road Builders Ltd

MRB Ltd

master road builders limited

MASTER ROAD BUILDERS LTD.

Maestro Camino Constructores Ltd

Or

GB-COH - 12345678

Basic

Publication Policy

Intermediate

Advanced

Versioned | Persistence | URIs

1. Map existing information sources
   What data do you have now? What data that users demand is missing? 
    
2. Identify the identifiers
   Can you identify a whole contracting process?
    
3. Engage users
   Understand the needs of your user community, and what they can bring to implementation.
    
4. Choose architecture
   Centralised vs. distributed
    
5. Publish & improve

Architectures

Implementation

examples

UK Government

(Work in progress)

Input API

Local 

tender 

systems

EU

TED

UK Government

(Work in progress)

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/getOCDS?noticeId={ID}

OCDS 

Release

Output

Third party platform to aggregate into records

http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/vuesurlescontrats/

Montreal

Mexico City: OCP Sharing & Learning project

1. Mapping existing data systems;
 

2. Planning updates to SAP platform;
 

3. Creating module to publish data

4. Working with civil society data users 

http://ocds.open-contracting.org

Help-desk:
data@open-contracting.org

• Questions?
• Supporting data validation
• Information about tools
• Standard updates

Discussion list:

standard-discuss@open-contracting.org

• Community updates
• Tool updates
• Standard news & upgrades

http://github.com/open-contracting/

• Line items
   
• Documents
   
• Values
   
• Milestones
   
• Dates
   
• Locations
   
• Organisations
   
• External links

Contracting process identifier

OCID

Globally unique identifier

Used in each release for a contracting process

Organisation identifiers

Master Road Builders Ltd

MRB Ltd

master road builders limited

MASTER ROAD BUILDERS LTD.

Maestro Camino Constructores Ltd

Or

GB-COH - 12345678

Documents & notices

Line items

Description

Quantity

Classifications

Location information

Extension: coming in version 1.1

Delivery address

Street address for geocoding

Delivery locations
gazetteer, points and polygons

Joined up data

Link out to other open datasets

Company register
 

Project registers
 

Budget data
 

Goods & services classifications

Etc.