Supporting open contracting data

Bidhive is committed to sharing open contracting data to increase competition, foster greater supply chain partnerships and boost the participation and success rates of businesses of all sizes, including SMEs and minority business, in public procurement.

Open contracting data can be a powerful tool to drive better decision making and deliver public sector efficiency, cost savings and a more level playing field for competition if it is used well.

Methodology: General Limitation

Collecting data: We use the open data published by AusTender, NSW e-tendering and UK Government Contracts Finder to provide a search function and dashboard tool about tender opportunities and contracts beginning January 2021 to the current date.

Bidhive plans to add new country data that is compliant with the Open Contracting Data Standards as it becomes available.

We update data sets every 24 hours.  Bidhive gathers structured data via API and maps the Open Contracting Data Standard to align with the Bidhive platform data sets.

Preparing data: After we collect the data Bidhive uses a range of tools to pre-process, map, and summarise the data. We assign tender opportunities and contracts to industry categories according to common classification schemes (such as UNSPSC, CPV) where available. If no keywords, UNSPSC or CPV codes match, the industry category will return a nil (-) search result.

Processing data: We calculate indicators and present them statistically with visualisations based on a limited set of parameters currently such as value, volume, time, buyer, supplier and industry category.

Disclaimer: Data sources might have data limitations:

• Missing tender opportunities: Bidhive uses keywords in both the title and description summary to narrow search terms, however there is the possibility of matching unrelated procurement opportunities and contracts where target keywords appear.
• Missing contracts: contracts might be missing if their value is below a threshold, or if exceptions are provided by law. The source might not have all contracts from all public bodies at all government levels, and some data might not yet be reported. In some cases, industry classification codes such as the UNSPSC or CPV may have been miscategorised at the source.
• Missing data fields from statistics and visualisations: Some entities comply with some, but not all, of the Open Contracting Data Standard. Therefore there could be some duplication or omission of data fields across the procurement lifecycle. This can cause some statistics and visualisations to be incomplete or inaccurate.
• Contract award value and volume visualisations: Bidhive reports contract award data according to Contract Period start date. In some instances the Contract Period start date may be forwarded planned and may differ to the Contract Award publish date.

Methodology: Australia, including NSW

This data is about Australia and New South Wales.

Data provider: Data is published by AusTender, the centralised publication of Australian Government annual procurement plans and contracts awarded. Business opportunities are excluded at this time as these are not available in Open Contracting Data Standard format. NSW eTendering is the online tendering system for NSW Government with upcoming, current and closed business opportunities.

Data source: Data is sourced using the Open Contracting Data Standard for New South Wales Department of Finance and Commonwealth Department of Finance.

Industry codes:  Open tenders and contracts are assigned to industry categories according to industry classification scheme codes such as the UNSPSC or CPV.

 Methodology: United Kingdom

This data is about the United Kingdom.

Data provider: Data is provided by Contracts Finder, a site that publishes information about contracts worth over £10,000 with the government and its agencies.

Data source: Data is sourced using the Open Contracting Data Standards for UK.gov Contracts Finder.

Industry codes:  Open tenders and contracts are assigned to industry categories according to industry classification scheme codes such as the UNSPSC or CPV.

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