Adding links to related OCDS contracts (excluded 2.03)

Standard Management 2.03 Decimal Upgrade Proposals
#1

Standard
Activity

Schema Object
iati-activiity/related-contract
iati-activity/transaction/related-contract

Type of Change
Addition

Issue
Contracts published using the Open Contracting Data Standard can be linked to activities published through IATI, at either activity or transaction level.

Proposal

Based on advice from @TimDavies …

  • related-contract/@contract-process-id
    Contracting process identifier - in OCDS this is the ocid (Open Contracting ID) and should be a globally unique identifier

  • related-contract/@contract-id
    Contract Identifier - a contracting process might result in multiple contracts (for example, a call for partners that then awards 5 partners, each with their own contract). The Contract ID only has to be unique within the scope of the contracting process, so to unique identify a specific contract requires the pairing of these identifiers

  • related-contract/@url
    A URL could be provided to a OCDS release package that contains the contracting process and contract discussed. However, OCDS does not use URLs as identifiers, and recognises that (a) some publishers provide multiple processes at a particular URI (e.g. when they only publish bulk data). and (b) some publishers struggle to maintain stable URIs - so we tend to think of URIs as helpful for users, but no guarantee of discovering information.

Standards Day
This was discussed in a TAG session on contracting but was mistakenly overlooked on the Standards Day agenda

Links

http://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/schema/identifiers/

Final Technical Proposal for the 2.03 Upgrade
#2

(#JoinedUpDataStandards)

Thanks @bill_anderson. I’ve alerted the OCDS community to this also and created a parallel issue at https://github.com/open-contracting/standard/issues/478

#3

I think the advice I was giving focussed on the need to have a way of identifying three things:

  • The related contracting process
  • The related contract in that process
  • The place where structured data on that process can be located

However, I’ve been looking back over our working paper on this, and the key issue there of modelling different kinds of relationship:

  • An aid activity operates through a contracting process
  • An aid activity results in one or more contracting processes
  • A contracting process leads to a one or more aid activities

I’m not sure that a related-contract element at the activity and transaction level helps us distinguish these adequately, and we would definitely want to refine the documentation around this to explain to publishers and users what they could interpret/learn from the inclusion of a related-contract link within a IATI publication.

I think it would be really useful for us to try and construct a quick worked example or two of the linkage with real world data just to check this out more. I think it should be possible to find examples from DFID where we could do this.

Final Technical Proposal for the 2.03 Upgrade
#4

This topic has been included for consideration in the formal 2.03 proposal subject to further clarification

#7

Notes from consultation calls w/c 3rd July

The proposal was reviewed by those on the call and there was no objection from the group.

#8