Open Contracting
This page contains open contracting data from the Crown Commercial Service.
Documents
Details
Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS)
The UK is the first G7 country to commit to the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) for contracts administered by a central purchasing authority, the Crown Commercial Service (CCS). This means that the whole process of awarding public sector contracts will be visible to the public for the first time.
Open contracting means all data and documents are disclosed at all stages of the contracting process. This supports organisations to increase contracting transparency, and allows deeper analysis of contracting data by a wide range of users.
Working with the Open Contracting Partnership we have published our review of the UK Showcase and Learning project in the form of a Measurement, Evaluation and Learning Framework. This sets out the impact of our implementation from a baseline date of May 2016 to November 2017 (unless otherwise specified). An earlier digest of our progress is available online.
OCDS outputs are available for both Find a Tender and Contracts Finder.
Find a Tender
You can download Find a Tender notices in OCDS JSON format using our application programming interface (API). Notice fields are mapped to OCDS version 1.1.5 with extensions as defined by the Open Contracting Partnership.
OCDS release package API
- https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/api/1.0/ocdsReleasePackages
- Filter by publication date, procurement stage, notice or procurement process (ocid)
- Help
Identifiers
- Release IDs are unique within a procurement process (ocid)
- Party (buyer or supplier) IDs are unique within a release
XML downloads
The same notice data is also available to download from the data.gov.uk website or using their API. Daily Zip files contain an XML file for each notice published on that day.
- View on data.gov.uk
- For information on the data.gov.uk API and the XML schemas used, see the Find a Tender data and API documentation
Contracts Finder
You can download Contracts Finder notices in OCDS JSON format using our API.
We have published a mapping document that shows how each field in each notice type maps to the corresponding field in OCDS.
Our Contracts Finder output is based v1.0 of the OCDS standard, with some enhancements from on v1.1. We plan to update to be fully compliant with v1.1 in the future.
OCDS search API
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Published/Notices/OCDS/Search
- Filter by publication date and procurement stage
- Help
OCDS record API
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Published/Notice/records/{{OCID}}.json
- Get information on a procurement process
- Help
OCDS release API
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Published/Notice/releases/{{NoticeId}}.json
- Get information on a Contracts Finder notice
- Help
OCDS CSV API
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/harvester/Notices/Data/CSV/{year}/{month}/{day}
- Get notices published on a particular date as a CSV file
- Help
- Also available on data.gov.uk
Buyer identifiers
Contracts Finder OCDS outputs a unique identifier for each registered buyer organisation on Contracts Finder. A published register of buyer IDs is available for download. Unique identifiers are output by the registration service. The identifiers may resemble website addresses, but they are not. Buying organisations can post to Contracts Finder without registering directly through a number of e-procurement systems. In these cases, the ID of the e-procurement system is output, rather than an identifier for each individual buying organisation on that system.
Users can be assured that they will receive the most up to date list at the time of download. Each organisation will be flagged as “Registered” or “De-registered” depending on whether they are still active on the system.
Additionally, GOV.UK Registers is curating approved registers to provide accurate and consistent data for use across government. Where we have found a match for a Contracts Finder Buyer in these registers, we are using the data to provide a unique identity for them in Contracts Finder. These registers are the Government Organisation Register and the Local Authority Register.
Supplier identifiers
Awarded suppliers’ Companies House or registered charity numbers are included in Contracts Finder’s OCDS outputs where these have been provided by the buyer.
Contracting 5
The governments of Colombia, France, Mexico, Ukraine and the UK officially launched the ‘Contracting 5’ (C5) initiative at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in December 2016. Argentina joined on the first anniversary.
The C5 are committed to working together to lead on using open data to improve public procurement and achieve better value for money; a fairer and more competitive business environment; better goods and services and; reduced corruption in public contracting. The UK is an active contributor to the C5, leading work in 2017 on establishing a common baseline for the C5 OCDS implementation projects.
Find out more about the ‘Contracting 5’.
Updates to this page
Published 1 December 2016Last updated 1 January 2021 + show all updates
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The page has been updated with additional information about OCDS outputs available for the new Find a Tender Service and information about Contracts Finder.
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The document 'CCS Contracts Finder Open Contracting Data Standard publication guide' has been updated.
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Replacing version 1 of CCS Contracts Finder Open Contracting Data Standard publication guide with version 2
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Text amended with latest news
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New input/output stats added
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Text amends made and new document updated
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Updated links
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New text / document added
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Text added
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Updated open contracting data standard release API URL
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First published.