# About Open Contracting
Government contracting is worth trillions of dollars a year.
Open Contracting is about opening up public contracting through disclosure, data and engagement so that the huge sums of money involved are spent honestly, fairly, and effectively.
It's an idea that is at work across sectors and along the whole process of government contracting to use the power of open data to save governments money and time, deliver better goods and services for citizens, prevent corruption, and to create a better business environment for all.
The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) provides a open standard format to provide open data and documents from all stages of the contracting process.
This workshop is co-organised by the global Open Contracting Partnership, HIVOS, and the OCDS Helpdesk, creating a space for shared learning for groups from across Europe working on opening up contracting.
Open Contracting http://www.open-contracting.org/
Open Contracting Data Standard http://standard.open-contracting.org/
- built based on an anlaysis of what data's out there, and what user needs there are for this data
Introduction to Open Contracting & OCDS slides
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11jWub2eYMzKotfu9hqYbagMh3niSD2jo2axT10-n2h8/edit#slide=id.g1333fc1be5_0_123
Reflections from the anti corruption summit:
http://www.open-contracting.org/2016/05/23/open-contracting-uk-anti-corruption-summit-reflections-next/
Hivos (Humanist Institute for Collaborations with Developing Countries) Open Contracting Data programme introduction slides https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XDZbTlvMS-rYwcAszKb9UkDy69okyzcOdUv4D3Qt4Wk/edit
# Notes from the group discussion
Examples of contracts we might want information from:
- Lots of discussion of the controverisal current new metro construction.
- (all we managed to find was the publication of a tender)
- Highways construction [ official site 404s but wikipedia is useful ]
Challenges:
- Information is not always released due to confidentiality/political concerns
- The data is published in lots of different places
- Information that we want is often missing, e.g. who the different bidders were
- Information is entered by hand, and not properly validated so lots of errors
- "When it's online it's too late" - data is only published once stuff's done
- Increasingly services are contracted out, so we need contracting transparency to maintain our current transparency
- The contracting information isn't just complex, sometimes contracts are being made even more complex/unreadable on purpose. How to extract an understandable story from these kinds of long-reads?
- When someone publishes, there are no guarantees that the information is 1) being read and 2) being kept online (no broken links). One would need a structural form of monitoring by either media or another institution.
Projects people are working on to make contract information more availible:
Who's interested in contracts?
- Average citizens are not generallly interested in looking through actual contracts, but are interested in the impact they have on their life, which is where the role of intermediaries is - journalists etc.
- Campanies are interested in seeing bidders / contracts that are related to what they do
Different levels of interest in contracts
- Looking at the specifics of an individual contract
- Looking through many similar contracts and being able to find them
- Automated analysis of large numbers of contracts, e.g. red flags
Changes from looking at contracts:
How to improve disclosure of contract information:
- Discussion of how to legally compel more information to be disclosed, e.g. contracts don't get paid until they get paid properly.
- Having a data standard allows us to make more thorough automated comparison between what data people are publishing, much like the Aid Transparency Index etc. exist around IATI
- Data standard helps people improve their internal systems also, and share re-usable tool
- Include parties that were denied a contract in data, as well as tender notices. This could make for a more in-depth analysis of data.
A blog post from June 7 by Open Contracting on the lessons learned from this session: http://www.open-contracting.org/2016/06/07/looks-public-contracts/