Guidance

Publishing contract data

Updated 9 August 2022

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/open-contracting-data-standard-profile

Use the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) v1.1 to publish the government’s contracting data.

1. Summary of the standard’s use for government

The OCDS defines a common data model that:

  • provides a consistent way to publish data at all stages of the contracting process
  • increases contracting transparency
  • provides a consistent format for analysing contracting data

The Contracts Finder service uses OCDS in its RESTful API to provide information on contracts held in its database. Contracts data is also available in OCDS CSV format.

If you publish government contracting data, you must follow your organisation’s policy on publishing data and the Public Contracts Regulation 2015.

The government chooses standards using the open standards approval process and the Open Standards Board has final approval. Read more about the process for the OCDS.

2. How this standard meets user needs

Using OCDS means you can be proactive and publish your public spending data at each stage of the contracting process. You can start by publishing basic data, and then improve the quality and amount of data.

The users of this standard are anyone in government who needs to publish contracting data.

The end users of the published data are:

  • public sector organisations that buy goods and services
  • organisations that supply of goods, services and works to public sector organisations
  • members of the public

The OCDS meets government user and end user needs by:

  • identifying buyer and supplier organisations, the items procured and the procurement process
  • making it clear who the suppliers are and how contracts are fairly awarded
  • supporting a wide range of document and data formats
  • letting users add codes or identifiers to keep track of a contract throughout the process
  • helping public organisations compare their data more easily
  • providing transparency

3. How to use the standard

You can use the OCDS for:

  • planning - budgets, projects or procurements
  • initiation - tender notices or specifications
  • awards - details of a contract award or bidder information
  • contracts - the final details of a contract or a signed contract
  • implementation - payments, contract extensions or terminations

You can use OCDS to:

  • code lists to help share and merge data
  • extensions to make your own templates - for example, a template for a contracts register

The OCDS website lists what you need to start publishing OCDS data.

You should use the PDF/A standards, or other suitable document publishing and archival standards, to make sure that documents associated with each contract are properly archived.

You will also find it useful to use government URI guidance with OCDS. It is important to publish data with a permanent and unique URI. This will give the data a definitive location so users accessing it are assured they are using the most up to date and accurate information.

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