Open Contracting Data (UK0093)
Overview
At-a-Glance
Action Plan: United Kingdom Action Plan 2019-2021
Action Plan Cycle: 2019
Status: Active
Institutions
Lead Institution: Cabinet Office
Support Institution(s): Other actors involved - government DCMS, Department for International Development Other actors involved - CSOs, private sector, working groups, multilaterals, etc Open Contracting Partnership, UK Open Contracting Steering Group
Policy Areas
Access to Information, Anti-Corruption, E-Government, Open Contracting and Public Procurement, Open Data, Public Participation, Public ProcurementIRM Review
IRM Report: United Kingdom Design Report 2019-2021
Starred: Pending IRM Review
Early Results: Pending IRM Review
Design i
Verifiable: Yes
Relevant to OGP Values: Access to Information , Civic Participation
Implementation i
Completion: Pending IRM Review
Description
Objective
To improve compliance, coverage, and quality of publication to Contracts
Finder so that all above threshold public contracts can be tracked from
planning to final spending.
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
Although there is increasing compliance with the requirement to publish
contract opportunities and awards through the Contracts Finder platform,
there remain data gaps and limitations that make it difficult for government,
the private sector, and citizens to understand the full pattern of government
procurement and spending, and to identify who the government is doing
business with.
It remains difficult to answer questions such as:
● How many contracts does government hold with Firm X? And how close
to completion are these?
● How many government tenders are being won by suppliers outside the
United Kingdom?
● How do terms and values for waste management contracts vary across
public authorities?
● How many contracts include a transparency clause supporting citizen
oversight of delivery?
Building on existing foundations, a focus on better data should be able to
answer these questions.
Although policy and guidance call for publication of contracting documents,
these are also often not published: sometimes due to fears about commercial
confidentiality restrictions. Recent myth busting work has shown commercial
confidentiality should not restrict most contract document publication.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
This commitment will drive continued developments of the Contracts Finder
platform, and UK implementation of the Open Contracting Data Standard
(OCDS) as a tool for transparency, accountability and operational analytics.
Improving the use and validation of non-proprietary, unique, reusable
organisation identifiers will help to provide a view of government business
with specific organisations, and will help identify the geographic origin and
beneficial ownership of those organisations.
Work on bringing subcontracting data into the Contracts Finder platform will
provide a clearer view of the government supply chain, including the presence
of SMEs, third-sector and mutual providers of services.
Improving compliance with policy requirements and guidance to publish
contract documents will assist analysis of how contract terms affect the price
and delivery of public services. The creation of additional OCDS compatible
metadata fields in Contracts Finder to indicate specific types of contract terms
(e.g. use of a transparency clause) will allow the consequences of outsourcing
on citizens access to information to be monitored.
Working with the community to build analytics tools of Contracts Finder data
will help government, private firms and citizens to use available data to be
more informed about public procurement.
Work on contract registers and spend linkage will support a move towards a
much more integrated public financial infrastructure, where citizens and
government can fully ‘follow the money’.
Providing transparency and open contracting guidance to the parties in Social
Impact Bonds to help improve this public contracting mechanism.
Lead implementing organisation
Cabinet Office
Timeline
September 2018 - April 2021
OGP values
Access to information, Public Accountability
Other actors involved - government
DCMS, Department for International Development
Other actors involved - CSOs, private sector, working groups, multilaterals, etc
Open Contracting Partnership, UK Open Contracting Steering Group
Verifiable and measurable milestones to fulfil the
commitment
Agree joint methodology with civil society for
measuring tender and award publication
Achieve 80% of above threshold tenders and awards on
Contracts Finder
Achieve 90% of above threshold tenders and awards on
Contracts Finder
Report regularly on publication of contract documents,
and extent of redactions.
Suppliers on larger central government contracts will
have to advertise subcontracting opportunities via the
Contracts Finder website.
Design and introduce fields for reporting on the use of
model contract transparency clauses
Design and pilot features to maintain a contracts
register and implementation progress information,
through Contracts Finder, supporting coverage from
planning -> implementation.
Publish buyer and supplier organisation identifiers for
90% of domestic awards, and all awards over £1m
Publisher supplier identifiers for 90% of international
awards
Consult widely on the impact and implications of linking
contracts and spend to identify opportunities for
identifier exchange between procurement and financial
systems
Four government agencies in DFID priority countries
regularly publish data in line with the Open Contracting
Data Standard (OCDS) by June 2020, with assistance
from Open Contracting Partnership (OCP).
IRM Midterm Status Summary
4. Open contracting data
Main Objective
“To improve compliance, coverage, and quality of publication to Contracts Finder so that all above threshold public contracts can be tracked from planning to final spending.”
Milestones
- Agree joint methodology with civil society for measuring tender and award publication.
- Achieve 80% of above threshold tenders and awards on Contracts Finder
- Achieve 90% of above threshold tenders and awards on Contracts Finder
- Report regularly on publication of contract documents, and extent of redactions.
- Suppliers on larger central government contracts will have to advertise subcontracting opportunities via the Contracts Finder website.
- Design and introduce fields for reporting on the use of model contract transparency clauses
- Design and pilot features to maintain a contracts register and implementation progress information, through Contracts Finder, supporting coverage from planning -> implementation.
- Publish buyer and supplier organisation identifiers for 90% of domestic awards, and all awards over £1m
- Publisher supplier identifiers for 90% of international awards.
- Consult widely on the impact and implications of linking contracts and spend to identify opportunities for identifier exchange between procurement and financial systems
- Four government agencies in DFID priority countries regularly publish data in line with the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) by June 2020, with assistance from Open Contracting Partnership (OCP).
Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see the United Kingdom’s action plan at https://bit.ly/2YPqNoV.
IRM Design Report Assessment | |
Verifiable: | Yes |
Relevant: | Access to Information, Civic Participation |
Potential impact: | Moderate |
Commitment Analysis
The commitment aims to publish in open format a greater volume of contracts data through the UK government’s portal. [9] The activities include increasing the volume of data available publicly in machine-readable format, thus generating more data for analysis. They also commit to improving data on international awards and working with the Department for International Development (DfID) priority countries to improve their own contracting data. The measurement of progress on this may be interrupted due to the merger of DfID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September 2020.
Increasing the amount of available open contracting data makes the commitment relevant to the OGP value of access to information. It is also relevant to the OGP value of civic participation, as milestone 10 calls for the government to “consult widely” on the impact and implications of linking contracts and spending, though this is not well-defined. Most of the planned activities are verifiable, as they provide percentages of above-threshold tenders that will be published as well as the percentage of supplier identifiers of international awards. Other milestones are less clear, such as “reporting regularly” on publication of contract documents and the extent of redactions (milestone 4) and “consulting widely” on the impact and implications of linking contracts and spend to identify opportunities for identifier exchange between procurement and financial systems (milestone 10).
The UK government included commitments around publishing contracts data openly and in the Open Contracts Data Standard (OCDS) format [10] in previous OGP action plan cycles. These past commitments, like the current commitment, refer primarily to ‘above-threshold’ contracts, and so are subject to exclusions, primarily concerning commercial sensitivity. [11] The threshold applies to transparent publishing in public purchasing. Tenders and contracts that fall above the new thresholds must be published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), a European-wide publication that ensures competition nationally and between European states. The thresholds cover tenders and contracts let under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016, the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016, and the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011. It is vital for such contracts to be published to ensure researchers, policymakers, legislators and campaigners have the right figures on which to base their calculations of public spending. At the beginning of the fourth action plan cycle, about 70 percent of ‘above-threshold’ [12] contracts were being published in a timely manner, so the milestones to increase this to 80-90 percent over the action plan period reflects a significant increase in available data on some of the highest value contracts awarded. [13] The milestones relating to identifiers and newer data fields on the Contract Finder system could also significantly improve the quality and breadth of the data to be made available, as these features were not previously available. These additions could make it easier to cross reference and aggregate data on contracts awarded, with new granularity on location, ownership or company linkages enabling more precise and detailed studies of contracting, thus enabling greater transparency and scrutiny of public spending.
These changes, if implemented, could significantly improve the quality of contracting data and provide a much clearer picture of how public money is spent. At the same time, such data can be used to identify less desirable contracting practices and can contribute to the identification of previously hidden beneficial owners or companies involved in corrupt practices. [14] The current published data is not granular, standardised or comprehensive enough to efficiently identify or uncover these practices, and as such, public money is potentially misused. Enhanced publication would enable civil society, journalists and researchers, as well as the government itself, to better analyse how and where government money is spent. It would also help users to identify patterns or significant points of interest in the contracts data concerning locations, companies, owners and other relevant data points that could inform government on how public money is spent and who benefits.
Overall, this commitment could significantly increase the volume of open contracting data currently available. However, there remain exemptions that can be applied to UK contracts data, and often these can be applied by government without clarifying the rationale. [15] Exemptions are primarily used in situations of commercial sensitivity or national security. This could limit what can be published as part of this commitment. [16] As such, milestones relating to the increase of publication and use of OCDS standards with regard to international contracts data may prove more impactful than the milestones focused on the UK data.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, open contracting data has emerged as one of the most important factors in a country’s ability to quickly and seamlessly secure the necessary resources to address health challenges, and avoid negative issues such as price-gouging, competition and fraud in the supply chain. In building on this commitment, the IRM recommends the UK government publish data with more granularity in relation to supply chains and invest in more international partnership work to increase the transparency of end-to-end supply chains, including where beneficial ownership lies.
Commitments
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Grants Data
UK0090, 2019, Access to Information
-
Digital Charter
UK0091, 2019, Access to Information
-
Open Policy Making
UK0092, 2019, Public Participation
-
Open Contracting Data
UK0093, 2019, Access to Information
-
Natural Resource Transparency
UK0094, 2019, Access to Information
-
Innovation in Democracy Programme
UK0095, 2019, Public Participation
-
Sustainable Open Government
UK0096, 2019, Capacity Building
-
Local Transparency
UK0097, 2019, Access to Information
-
Beneficial Ownership – UK
UK0063, 2016, Anti-Corruption
-
Natural Resource Transparency
UK0064, 2016, Access to Information
-
Anti-Corruption Strategy
UK0065, 2016, Anti-Corruption
-
Anti-Corruption Innovation Hub
UK0066, 2016, Anti-Corruption
-
Open Contracting
UK0067, 2016, Access to Information
-
Grants Data
UK0068, 2016, Access to Information
-
Elections Data
UK0069, 2016, Access to Information
-
Revising Freedom of Information Act Code of Practice
UK0070, 2016, Access to Information
-
Identifying and Publishing Core Data Assets
UK0071, 2016, Access to Information
-
Involving Data Users in Shaping the Future of Open Data
UK0072, 2016, Access to Information
-
Better Use of Data Assets
UK0073, 2016, Access to Information
-
GOV.UK
UK0074, 2016, Access to Information
-
Ongoing Collaborative Approach to Open Government Reform
UK0075, 2016, E-Government
-
Open Government at All Levels
UK0076, 2016, Public Participation
-
Open Policy-Making and Public Engagement
UK0077, 2016, Capacity Building
-
Public Sector Innovation
UK0078, 2016, Access to Information
-
OCDS Implementation
UK0079, 2016, Access to Information
-
Open-Up Government
UK0080, 2016, Access to Information
-
Open Data Plan
UK0081, 2016, Access to Information
-
Open Data Service
UK0082, 2016, Access to Information
-
Statswales
UK0083, 2016, Access to Information
-
Data Research Centre Wales
UK0084, 2016, E-Government
-
Government Social Research Publication Protocol
UK0085, 2016, E-Government
-
Gov.Wales
UK0086, 2016, E-Government
-
Code of Practice in Supply Chains
UK0087, 2016, Labor
-
National Indicators for Wales
UK0088, 2016, Fiscal Openness
-
Well-Being Duty
UK0089, 2016, Anti-Corruption
-
National Information Infrastructure
UK0042, 2013,
-
NHS England Website and Network
UK0043, 2013, Health
-
Revised Local Authories Data Transparency Code
UK0044, 2013, Capacity Building
-
Transparent Social Investment Market
UK0045, 2013, Access to Information
-
Manage and Capture Digital Records
UK0046, 2013, Capacity Building
-
Cross-Government Anti-Corruption Plan
UK0047, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
Company Beneficial Ownership Information
UK0048, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
Access to Police Records
UK0049, 2013, Justice
-
Transparency in Construction
UK0050, 2013, Infrastructure & Transport
-
Legislative Openness
UK0051, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
Whistleblowing
UK0052, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
Open Contracting
UK0053, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
Open Contracting Scotland
UK0054, 2013, Anti-Corruption
-
International Aid Transparency
UK0055, 2013, Access to Information
-
Health Care Data
UK0056, 2013, Access to Information
-
Open Policy Making
UK0057, 2013, E-Government
-
Sciencewise
UK0058, 2013, E-Government
-
Publication of Draft Legislation
UK0059, 2013, Open Parliaments
-
OpenDataCommunities Programme
UK0060, 2013, Access to Information
-
PSI Re-Use Directive
UK0061, 2013, Access to Information
-
Extractive Transparency
UK0062, 2013, Access to Information
-
Ensuring a Clear Process to Support Reduction in Collection of ‘Unnecessary Data’
UK0024, 2011, E-Government
-
Developing Data.Gov.Uk and Identifying Other Digital Channels to Support Users
UK0025, 2011,
-
Evidence and Databases Behind Policy Statements
UK0026, 2011, E-Government
-
Data Underlying Surveys
UK0027, 2011, E-Government
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Examining Ways for Improving the Use of Existing Published Data
UK0028, 2011, E-Government
-
Stimulate the Market for Innovative Use of Open Data
UK0029, 2011, Access to Information
-
Spend up to 5% of Budget Support on Accountability
UK0030, 2011, E-Government
-
Include the OGP Eligibility Criteria to Determine Readiness for UK Budget Support
UK0031, 2011, Aid
-
Publish Aid Information from All ODA Government Departments
UK0032, 2011, Aid
-
Use a Single Domain for Government Services
UK0033, 2011, E-Government
-
Mandate ‘Channel Shift’
UK0034, 2011, E-Government
-
Go Online for All Consultations
UK0035, 2011, E-Government
-
Develop Practical Guidelines on Departmental Access to Internet and Social Media
UK0036, 2011, Civic Space
-
Open Data and Application Interfaces in Ways That Encourage Businesses
UK0037, 2011, Access to Information
-
Create Cross-Government Standards on APIs
UK0038, 2011, Public Participation
-
Establish Standardised Formats for User-Satisfaction Data
UK0039, 2011, Public Participation
-
Provide Government Documents in Open Standard Format
UK0040, 2011, Access to Information
-
Implement Crowd-Sourcing and Engagement Processes
UK0041, 2011, Public Participation
-
New Power to Secure Release of Valuable Datasets
UK0001, 2011,
-
New, Higher Cost Cap for FOI
UK0002, 2011, Access to Information
-
Meaningful Disincentives
UK0003, 2011,
-
Maximum Time Limits
UK0004, 2011, Access to Information
-
Altered Procurement Rules
UK0005, 2011,
-
Mandating Phased Introduction of ‘Public by Default’
UK0006, 2011, E-Government
-
Formalising Public Data Principles
UK0007, 2011,
-
Having in Place an Open Data Compliance Monitoring Process
UK0008, 2011,
-
Making Clear the Minimum Citizens Can Expect on Publication and Quality of Data
UK0009, 2011,
-
Ensuring a Line of Continuous Improvement for Public Service Providers
UK0010, 2011, Access to Information
-
Encourage Continuous Improvement
UK0011, 2011,
-
Setting Out How Citizens Can Challenge Where There Is Failure in the Process
UK0012, 2011, Public Participation
-
Establishing an Obligation to Consider and Act on User Feedback
UK0013, 2011, Public Participation
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Making Clear That Licenses Must Cover Free, Commercial Re-Use
UK0014, 2011,
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Merge Information Asset Registers…Into a Single Data Inventory
UK0015, 2011,
-
Set Consistent Expectations of the Appropriate Quality of Meta-Data
UK0016, 2011, Records Management
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For Data Co-Ordinated Across Government, Set Definitions
UK0017, 2011, E-Government
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Introducing Corporate Responsibility at Transparency Board Level
UK0018, 2011,
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Strengthening and Broadening the Public Sector Transparency Board
UK0019, 2011, Anti-Corruption
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Bringing the Sector Transparency Board Model to Other Parts of Public Sector
UK0020, 2011, Anti-Corruption
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Reviewing the Existing Governance and Regulatory Model
UK0021, 2011,
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Establishing a Framework for Public Service Providers Data Inventories
UK0022, 2011, Records Management
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Developing a Clear Methodology to Support Intelligent Inventories
UK0023, 2011,