Do You Have Data Integrity?
Not all data is the same. It might have come from the same source, but how it gets treated is vital. If a data company doesn't have good data hygiene practices things can get messy very quickly, making it hard to understand the data or undermining your valuable analysis.
These are our rules for ensuring data integrity:
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Contracting Emissions
We’ve built an analysis of carbon emissions by contract.
Our team has shown some real dedication to get this far with the work.
There’s still a long way to go.
We’ve got a first draft analysis and projections for carbon emissions based on the UK’s contract data.
We’re sharing an early dashboard to get feedback- you'll find it here www.spendnetwork.com/carbon
Get ...
You Don’t Care About Open Data.
We only charge for commercial use of our data. Non commercial users get it for free.
That means that our data is open.
If you're a business you probably don't care about the data being open.
But you should.
Here's why.
Every day people are gathering and analysing our data for their own research. That means it gets used a ...
Zombie Tenders On The Rise
Across Europe, the number of single bid tenders that only receive one bid continues to grow. Despite the pandemic, the number of contracts awarded after just one bid has been received is staying stubbornly high at 20%.
This means that one in five bids doesn't accrue enough interest to create any competition.
We call these zombie tenders and ...
Our story. Reinventing a business.
Spend Network exists because I almost lost everything.
Where we came from:
I'd built a consultancy with twenty staff and clients across the financial and government sectors.
It was a good little firm.
We knew our stuff and it was good to see Government and Banks collaborating.
The crash
Then the financial crisis hit.
Our clients withdrew from contracts and projects in ...
Algorithms That Are Better Than Humans
Categorisation is about making it easier to find opportunities.
Getting it right means being better than humans.
For it be really useful, we have to be able to take source documents and, where necessary improve on the categorisation provided by the publisher.
If a publisher gives us a record that is classified as construction, that is useful, but if ...
Review All Open Covid Contracts Here
In October, we openly published all the contracts let by the UK public sector around Covid.
In light of today's report by the National Audit Office on their Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic, we thought it useful to share our portal again, with all available published data on government contracts around Covid.
The table is ...
Finding Beneficiaries of Public Money
By Alex Yeung.
Part 1: The Matching Process
Linking entities is a common theme in procurement data, but it is a significant problem in the UK. The concern with entity matching is the cost of false positives. This issue is particularly stark when finding the beneficiaries of money. The main challenge is that name matching is largely insufficient ...
The little codes that hold our world together
Have you noticed that your email address is completely unique? Its obvious that this would be true, but it bears thinking about. In all the millions and millions of email addresses there isn’t another like yours, if there was another like yours there would be no way for your colleagues and friends to send a note ...
What Needs To Happen To Open Public Procurement – Technology
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network
Another key element to open public procurement is technology. Getting data into the public sphere can often be over complicated, but it needn't be. If you already have a system for collecting data on tenders and contracts, you'll need to talk to your provider about making that data available openly. The main ...
Our Partnership With Open Contracting
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network
We're passionate advocates for contracting transparency. Not just because it makes it harder for corrupt officials and their partners, but also because there's good evidence that it makes public markets more competitive and more efficient.
That's why we work so closely with the Open Contracting Partnership, they're the ones doing the heavy lifting ...
One Among Thousands – Creating a Dictionary of Public Sector Buyers.
Here are just three among thousands of public sector buyers:
YPO,
JISC,
NOE CPC.
Who are they? What do they do? Are they a private organisation or a public organisation? Every month, we get data for tens of thousands of unique buyer names just like these, from around the world. We answer the questions of who they are and what ...
Data Works: Ensuring Quality Through Validation
When is something right?
We process over 150,000 records a month. Our database now has more than 150m rows in it. We can't view every record when we enter it.
Instead, we validate it. We check that each record has what our users need; a deadline date, a description and a buyer.
We also check that our key sources ...
Data Quantity on Contracts Finder: The Long View.
Covid-19 has shown us the importance of transparency in procurement. A transparent process allows suppliers and buyers to clearly identify each other, and set benchmarks on how others are buying and selling.
Contracts Finder has made great strides in facilitating this transparency over recent years. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, an Act of Parliament, established the existence ...
Data Works: Creating Machine Learning Models For Categorisation
-Ian Makgill, Founder Spend Network
We're working hard on a new set of machine learning models for categorisation. It has proven to be really challenging.
Developing an accurate categorisation for all our data is our ultimate goal. At the moment, some records have classifications, some do not. Some of the records with classifications aren't correct.
We want our users ...