Open Contracting Data (UK0093)

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).

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

1. Agree joint methodology with civil society for measuring tender and award publication.
2. Achieve 80% of above threshold tenders and awards on Contracts Finder
3. Achieve 90% of above threshold tenders and awards on Contracts Finder
4. Report regularly on publication of contract documents, and extent of redactions.
5. Suppliers on larger central government contracts will have to advertise subcontracting opportunities via the Contracts Finder website.
6. Design and introduce fields for reporting on the use of model contract transparency clauses
7. Design and pilot features to maintain a contracts register and implementation progress information, through Contracts Finder, supporting coverage from planning -> implementation.
8. Publish buyer and supplier organisation identifiers for 90% of domestic awards, and all awards over £1m
9. Publisher supplier identifiers for 90% of international awards.
10. Consult widely on the impact and implications of linking contracts and spend to identify opportunities for identifier exchange between procurement and financial systems
11. 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.

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.

Commitment 4. Open contracting data

Substantial

Aim of the commitment

This commitment aimed to publish in open format a greater volume of contracts data through the UK Government’s portal, Contracts Finder. ^[6] The activities included increasing the volume of data available publicly in machine-readable format through the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). It also aimed to improve data on international awards and work with the Department for International Development (since September 2020 part of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) priority countries to improve their own contracting data.

Did it open government?

Major

As a result of this commitment, UK procurement data - which all interviewed stakeholders described as previously being highly fragmented - has become substantially more granular and comprehensive. The Involvement of Spend Network and the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) in the commitment resulted in a strong desire for data interoperability and pushed stakeholders towards working with the OCDS for Contracts Finder. Both CSOs had contractual arrangements with the government regarding their involvement in the action plan, which provided them with modest resources to undertake this project or co-finance the work.

The first milestone to develop a joint methodology with civil society to measure how tenders and awards are published was achieved in November 2019 within the UK open contracting steering group. In terms of increasing the number of above threshold tenders and awards on Contracts Finder, the results are mixed. Substantial improvements have been made, and both the draft self-assessment, as well as the accounts of interviewed CSOs, [7] confirm that the goals of 80 per cent and 90 per cent have been achieved and were slightly exceeded. ^[8] This pertains only to tenders, however, and means that for contracts, these numbers were not achieved. Further complicating these results is the fact that for many tenders on Contracts Finder, there is no value listed (or only a range listed). Some stakeholders estimate that only 60 per cent of the contracts on Contracts Finder list the actual contract value. [9] In addition, framework contracts with subcontracts are not always captured, and many exemptions continue to exist (including for departments making sizeable procurements). Moreover, the Contracts Finder website is still not 100 per cent OCDS compliant and the tender(s) associated with a given contract are not always published, making it challenging to match contracts with the relevant tender notice.

On a positive note, some suppliers on larger central contracts have advertised 58 opportunity and early engagement notices (Milestone 5) and a number of such opportunity notices were also published on Contracts Finder. Moreover, thanks to CSO involvement in this commitment, the work also brought about concrete use cases that helped other parties, such as journalists, to use open contracting data. For example, drawing on data provided by Spend Network and OCP, BBC Newsnight investigated what local councils spent on accommodation for vulnerable teenagers and discovered that the care fell short of what authorities and their contractors were expected to provide. ^[10]

The design and introduction of fields for reporting on the use of model contract transparency clauses (Milestone 6) did not take place. The draft self-assessment attributes this to the fact that “transparency clauses have been embedded as a standard part of the model services contract” and that “reporting on implementation of a single clause would place an unnecessary burden on contracting authorities”. The draft self-assessment also mentions that buyer and supplier organization identifiers for domestic contract awards of over 1 million GBP (Milestone 8) were not published, most likely as a result of broader challenges, including those related to the pandemic. Consultations on the impact and implications of linking contracts and spending to identify opportunities for identifier exchange between procurement and financial systems (Milestone 10) were postponed, pending the implementation of public procurement reforms announced in late 2020. [11] Lastly, Milestone 11 of this commitment called for four government agencies in DFID priority countries (since September 2020, part of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) to publish data in line with the OCDS, with assistance from OCP. The draft self-assessment notes that, as of December 2021, five government agencies are regularly publishing data in line with the OCDS. [12]

Although not within the remit of this commitment, the government organized a broad consultation from December 2020 to March 2021 to solicit feedback from over 500 relevant stakeholders and organizations and published its findings in the Green Paper: Transforming public procurement. ^[13] This is commendable, and the IRM recommends that going forward, the outcomes of this consultation feed into relevant commitments in future action plans. In addition, interviewed stakeholders argued that in going forward, it will be essential to deepen the levels of collaboration on open contracting data. To this effect, the IRM recommends continuing making all public contracting data OCDS compliant and upgrading relevant Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) feeding Contracts Finder so that incoming data is OCDS compliant.