Description
Reform Description
UK National Action Plan for Open Government 2024-2025 (NAP6) has 4 commitment areas including open contracting. The standalone submission is an extension of this commitment.
Following the launch of the Procurement Act 2023 in February 2025, we are now in the position to capitalise on the new data available and we aim to leverage the raw data we have and export into publicly available dashboards. The UK has not yet had a central dashboard for public use and this solution will be a positive step to live up to our transparency ambitions.
Taking individual procurement notice data across the procurement lifecycle will allow us to include interactive dashboards that provide real-time insights into procurement data, facilitating comparative analysis and trend identification. This will be of benefit for stakeholders, especially the public, to simplify complex procurement data into user-friendly visualisations.
Our aim is that the dashboards will be able to track Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) red flag indicators which will be invaluable for both civil society and compliance monitoring stakeholders, such as the Procurement Review Unit (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/procurement-review-unit) and Competitions and Markets Authority. The dashboards will provide headline measures, red flag indicators and metrics to track the delivery of Government priorities such as increasing spending with small and medium-sized enterprises SMEs and Charity organisations.Using the data overview, stakeholders will more easily be able to draw out trends and comparisons across public sector procurement activity. This will both increase transparency of public procurement activity and provide the right tools to enable the public to hold the government to account
A core objective of this commitment is to leverage open contracting data to track and drive progress towards the strategic priorities for the Government as outlined in the National Procurement Policy Statement. This will be a compelling example of how improved transparency, data and open government reforms deliver real value to citizens and should result in powerful metrics of impact such as increased competition, SME inclusion and better value to the taxpayer. The dashboards will provide visualisations to demonstrate how public procurement is supporting the Government’s missions. This will promote evidence-based policymaking and continuous improvement driven by data insights, aligning procurement practices with national priorities through the NPPS.
We will continue to collaborate with civil society through the existing UK ‘Open Contracting Advisory Group’ data workshops to co-create the dashboards, reporting into the overarching UK Open Government Programme MSF. This will allow us to gather invaluable insights into the needs, challenges and priorities of users interacting with procurement data.
Problem(s) Addressed by Reform
Since the launch of the Procurement Act in February 2025, we now have a growing data set across the whole procurement lifecycle, presenting a single picture of procurement on the central digital platform. As set out in ‘Our Transparency Ambition’, we recognise that there aren’t always the tools to unlock more of the valuable market insight public bodies could collectively get from this information. This means the data that contracting authorities enter isn’t harnessed to its fullest extent to aid in making informed commercial decisions, assessing the quality of procurement and delivery of policy ambitions.
Historically, there was a lot of disconnected data that was very hard to reconcile and bring together. Thanks to the Act and the new notices with new fields and new identifiers for the first time, the UK has a coherent data set and the challenge opportunity is to leverage that to deliver on the promise of better procurement.
Additionally, the Government launched the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) in February 2025 to set out the Government’s strategic priorities for public procurement. The NPPS details how public procurement can support delivery of the Government’s 5 missions including a commitment to transparency.
The key problem we are aiming to address is the lack of user friendly, publicly available data visualisation tools for our stakeholders to interrogate. A 5 whys problem analysis is included below:
Why is there limited transparency in public procurement?
There was no legislative mandate to have all procurement data in a single, free-to-access format for stakeholders to draw insight from. Previously, there were multiple sources of data each recording different elements of the procurement lifecycle, meaning insights were hard to draw.
Why was the data not in a central location?
Previous efforts have not focused on centralising procurement data into a single location to effectively leveraging the data to create intuitive visualizations and insights.
Why has the data not been leveraged effectively?
Stakeholder needs and requirements for data interrogation tools have not yet been systematically gathered.
Why have stakeholder needs not been gathered?
Establishing the legal framework, digital infrastructure and centralised data platform took precedence initially. Now we have a critical mass of OCDS data from new notices to begin leveraging for data insights.
Why did the infrastructure take precedence over open access data efforts?
Laying the necessary legal framework was a critical first step in gathering data in our systems- now this has been done, we can focus on harnessing this data.
This action represents a significant step forward in tackling the legacy issues of limited transparency over the contract lifecycle and accessibility of data within the UK’s public procurement system. It directly confronts the challenge of complex, opaque procurement processes that hinder public understanding and accountability. By leveraging the newly available data from the Central Digital Platform and mandated by the Procurement Act 2023, this initiative aims to improve access to crucial information and empower citizens to actively participate in overseeing how public funds are spent.
The core of this reform lies in the creation of publicly accessible, interactive dashboards. These dashboards are specifically designed to transform complex, procurement data into user-friendly visualisations. This is a crucial element, as it lowers the barrier to entry for the public, civil society organisations, and even smaller suppliers, enabling them to quickly grasp procurement activities, identify trends, and gain real-time insights. This enhanced understanding is essential for informed scrutiny and effective oversight.
The dashboards will track key metrics critical to ensuring responsible and effective procurement practices. This includes the Open Contracting Partnership red flag indicators, which highlight potential risks of corruption or mismanagement. By monitoring these indicators, stakeholders can assess the government’s progress in promoting fair competition, supporting local businesses, and achieving social value through procurement.
Beyond simply providing data, this initiative aims to foster a culture of greater engagement with public procurement. Increased transparency around forward-looking requirements, through pipeline, planned procurement and preliminary market engagement notices, will encourage preliminary market engagement between buyers and suppliers. Using engagement notices as a springboard, contracting authorities can innovatively use social media to promote their engagement opportunities to reach a wider pool of potential suppliers. This benefits both parties: buyers gain access to innovative solutions and a wider pool of potential suppliers, while suppliers, particularly smaller businesses, have the opportunity to shape procurement requirements and compete effectively. This ultimately leads to improved value for money in public service delivery and promotes economic growth. By providing business intelligence tools to the public, this initiative seeks to create a more transparent and accountable public procurement system that benefits all stakeholders.
Relevance to OGP Values
The commitment promotes transparency by embedding open contracting practices throughout the procurement lifecycle. By leveraging the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), it ensures that all procurement information is published in a standard, accessible format, offering citizens easy access to comprehensive data on government spending. This transparency empowers citizens to scrutinise spending decisions, by providing real-time insights and dashboards, simplifying complex data into user-friendly visualisations.
By simplifying complex data into user-friendly visualisations, citizens can monitor progress and identify irregularities, holding public agencies accountable. The newly established Procurement Review Unit (PRU) plays a key role in this by overseeing compliance and publishing reports on procurement practices, reinforcing transparency.
Open public consultations on future policy development will enable citizens to provide feedback on the priorities. The feedback loop will be further strengthened when there is easy-to-analyse, publicly available procurement data as the public will be able to make informed decisions and provide quality feedback on any proposals.
This commitment meets the ambition of the Challenge:
Ambition: This initiative raises the ambition for open government in public procurement and anti-corruption by making comprehensive open contracting data the new default across the UK’s public sector. It goes beyond existing practice by mandating publication of procurement data in an an open format, compatible with the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) throughout the full lifecycle, establishing mechanisms like the Procurement Review Unit for oversight and accountability, and future plans to provide real-time dashboards for public scrutiny. It sets ambitious new expectations around government openness in public contracting.
Innovation: The commitment innovates by leveraging cutting-edge data standards like the OCDS and building interactive dashboards that harness digital capabilities to simplify complex procurement data into user-friendly visualizations. This allows unprecedented public access to analyse government spending.
Sustainability: The legal mandate through the Procurement Act 2023, centralised digital infrastructure, and systematic data publication processes embedded across government point to high potential for long-term sustainability. Using an OCDS-based foundation will allow both the UK Government and OGP partners to continually build and improve on the framework we have established.
Involvement of civil society: Civil society has been actively involved through the UK Open Contracting Advisory Group which brings together civil society organisations (CSOs) to inform the open contracting work. Regular multi-stakeholder forums and data workshops facilitate ongoing dialogue and co-creation with civil society.
Intended Results
What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment?
The primary aim of the dashboards is to give the public and suppliers to the public sector – especially smaller SME and VCSE providers – an accessible user interface which allows them to interrogate public procurement data. Along the lines of other innovative open contracting reforms, we will integrate a set of business intelligence tools onto our central digital platform both for government and public monitoring based on published data required by the new legislation. This will increase transparency around how the public sector spends money and empower citizens with the tools to hold the public sector to account.
We hope this will upskill and encourage more citizens to engage with the procurement activity that affects them. This greater transparency, particularly with respect to public sector forward procurement needs, will foster greater preliminary market engagement between buyer and supplier and in turn boost the scope for innovation and value for money in public service delivery.
We have already seen some initial successes despite only being live for 3 months- for example, we have 4300 “pipeline” notices of future opportunities across 250 buyers. This is great for SMEs. We also have over 2000 pre-market engagement notices which offer opportunities for suppliers to engage with buying teams in informing their procurements. This data is all public and can be easily shared and accessed by the public.
Milestones
New Central digital platform
Milestones:
March 2025 – OCP feedback on new notice data
Expected outputs:
Confirmation of the potential for new notices to support monitoring of key policies, such as spend with SMEs and red flag analysis of public procurements.
Expected completion date:
March 2025
Stakeholders:
Lead: OCP
CO Transparency Team
Open Contracting Group members
New Data and data use workshops
Milestones:
January 2025 – First data workshop with civil society and departments
June 2025 – Second data workshop – case studies
November 2025 – Third data workshop – Hackathon [TBC]
January 2026 – Fourth data workshop
Expected outputs:
Sharing progress and discussion of potential use of data.
Sharing of real examples of data use by government, suppliers and civil society.
Explore collaborative use of UK public procurement data.
Planning opportunity.
Expected completion date
January 2026
Stakeholders
Lead: CO transparency team
CO data Team, Open Contracting Group Members, Department of Education, Ministry of Justice, Department of Health & Social Care, Ministry of Defence, Home Office, MHCLG.
Analytical dashboards
Milestones:
May 2025 – data planning based
July 2025 – discovery for CDP Transparency dashboards [TBC]
October 2025 – Private beta for CDP Transparency dashboards [TBC]
December 2025 – Public Beta for CDP Transparency dashboards [TBC]
Expected outputs
Exploring the opportunity to work with civil society on exploiting data.
Capturing user needs for public facing data dashboards.
User feedback.
Make the dashboards available to the public.
Expected completion date:
[TBC]
Stakeholders:
CO Transparency team
Open Contracting Group members, Department of Education, Ministry of Justice, Department of Health & Social Care, Ministry of Defence, Home Office, MHCLG.
Is Civil Society Involved?
Yes; see answers to questions [above]