Open Contracting Data Standard in Open Procurement

Read about Open Contracting Data Standard in Open Procurement and how filtered data is released

OCDS is an open data standard for a structured presentation of the data on the contracting process. It was developed by Open Contracting Partnership to reflect the complete contracting cycle.

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What benefits?

  • Filtered according to OCDS data are more accessible, so analysis of contracting metadata is more convenient and efficient.
  • OCDS use renders data interoperable, and assures better link among the systems.
  • A great tool in fighting corruption as it enables transparent data presentation.

How to apply?

  • OCDS describes in details the procedure of releasing contracting data and offers a framework for governments to continuously collect and publish their information.
  • Using the standard, users and partners around the world can publish reusable, shareable, machine readable data, to join those data with their own ones and analyze or share them.
  • Analysts and citizens can analyze efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of public procurement of goods, works and services.

When and how are data released?

A new portion of data, filtered out according to OCDS v. 1.0, is released every Friday. A folder with published data contains a full release of tenders until a certain date that is indicated in its name.

There are three types of published files:

  1. an example.json file - containing release packages with 24 releases, and with no additional add-ons for opening required;
  2. a merged_ {date} file - containing JSON-files with release-packages, with 4096 releases in each. It also contains an archive with all the releases together with a torrent link for downloading.
  3. a merged_with_extensions_{date} file - containing release-packages with an extended OCDS scheme that includes data, not required by OCDS, but published in proZorro. Such data are released as extensions. These extensions are listed in Patches.zip file in JSON Patch format and also contain files with 4096 releases each.

ProZorro OCDS data can be accessed at http://ocds.prozorro.openprocurement.io/, its code can be reached at https://github.com/openprocurement, and for OpenProcurement's API documentations you can visit http://api-docs.openprocurement.org/.

For more details on OCDS and Open Contracting Partnership see: http://standard.open-contracting.org/1.0