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 considerations will be whether the existing system can scale to meet increased demand and whether the system can output OCDS compliant data.

You’ll also need to think about how to make sure that the data can be found and what information to gather. You’ll need to make data searchable and to label the data correctly. You might need to consider categorisation, as well as making sure that individual organisations can be identified correctly.

If you’re buying a new e-procurement solution, there is also guidance on what to include in your specification.

You need to be sure that your system can handle OCDS data, including publishing this data to an API, effectively a website that can be accessed by computers rather than humans.

If you have to collect data from multiple sources, or you have no system in place you’ll need to set up a data collection process, this could be done in a range of different ways. We already gather and publish data from over 700 sources before mapping it to OCDS, so we can help you aggregate your data if you need.

We’re also working with the British Government to build tools that allow organisations to quickly aggregate and publish large volumes of OCDS data from multiple sources.

Spend Network provides an easy to use publication service for Governments, we gather all of the data you need and publish it online for a simple, flat fee. To find out more get in touch.