Open public procurement data (IT0067)

Short description
Publishing datasets on purchases made by public administrations using the digital platform
Aquistinretepa.it: (i) tenders, (ii) directory of authorized public administrations (iii) directory and
participations of businesses, (iv) catalogue of goods and services, (v) negotiations, (vi) purchases.

General objective
Provide information about the Programme for the rationalization of public procurement in an open
format in order to enhance transparency of administrative action and share information resources
among public administrations, suppliers, civil society and citizens.

Current situation
The dissemination of Public Sector Information (PSI) is no longer a recommendation but an obligation as a result of
the latest EU Directives.
Italy adopted innovative legislation on how to manage public data access not only by embracing the principle of
"Open data by default", but also establishing value enhancing policies, tools and guidelines to facilitate the
production of high quality, usable and interoperable open data.
The idea of openness in PA is not something new and historically PA has been producing, collecting and distributing
structured and certified information. PA itself benefits from Open Data as a tool to facilitate interoperability with
consequent management cost reduction. Open data strengthen the concept of "value" of information, in addition
to transparency, and allow citizens to inspire PA itself.

The project is aimed at exploiting the possibility for public administrations, suppliers and citizens to share
information and cooperate. More specifically, the objective is to provide in an open format: (i) all the information
regarding the Rationalization Programme; (ii) foster the exchange of information between public and private actors
using the Linked Open Data approach.
The web site dati.consip.it has been online since September 2016. It was developed using open source SW and is
hosted on a cloud infrastructure. It allows users to explore five categories of datasets - Administrations, Suppliers,
Tenders, Participations and Catalogues – including, respectively, information on ordering administrations and
authorized/contracted suppliers, calls for tender issued by Consip under the Programme, the participations of
suppliers in tenders and the catalogues of available goods and services.
Consistently with the Guidelines issued by Agid in 2016 on the enhancement of the public stock of information,
datasets have the CC BY 4.0 license and are freely reusable also for commercial purposes. They are provided in an
.CSV open format and with an API, and include “metadata” to facilitate their correct interpretation by users. The
catalogue of metadata is integrated in the National Open Data Catalogue on http://www.dati.gov.it and complies with the
DCAT-AP_IT profile.
Datasets are thoroughly updated on a monthly basis and cover the previous three year period. The website also
contains a section with summary indicators for non-practitioners to easily understand the Programme for the
Rationalization of public procurement. The Portal dati.consip.it will play a key role in ensuring the accessibility and
use of the information produced in acquistinretepa.it, the possibility to ask for new information and provide
evaluation feedback.

Expected results
The project, after the completion of the following phases – phase 2 "Publication of new datasets and infographics
on Negotiations and Purchases in the .csv format" and phase 3 "Publication of data in the Linked Open Data format
and monitoring of the use of published datasets by other private or public entities" – will allow citizens to monitor
the value and quality of public procurement.
More in detail, the new datasets provided in Phase 2 will be specialized for each instrument (Convention, Framework
Agreement, MEPA, SDAPA) to privilege their peculiarities and reduce the complexity of interpretation. It will be
possible to analyze the expenditure on the Program per type of goods / service identified by CPV, per type of
administration, by geographical area (region) of the supplier and PA. The dataset for Orders under Convention, for
example, provide aggregate information about the orders number and orders value for goods and services, about
utilities consumption, about the number of PAs and Suppliers. The MEPA negotiation datasets, aggregated for
tender and habilitation category (lots), include indicators such as the number of RDOs published and stipulated in
the year, the total value of auction bases and contracts, the total number of contracting PAs and participating
suppliers, invitation modalities and average number of invited operators, the average time required by the
negotiations.
The harmonization of activities in the different project phases and the ongoing evolution of the same as a result of
feedbacks received by the "open data community" are ensured by a governance project line. The higher
accountability level achieved will be an advantage for all players and stakeholders in the public procurement sector.