Use: Procurement data analytics¶
The following indicator is under consideration for this pilot edition of the Barometer: To what extent is there evidence of government procurement data being analysed to improve procurement practice?
Definitions and Identification
Procurement data analytics involves using structured data about procurement processes to produce insights and knowledge, and to support decision making.
Amongst other things, procurement data analytics can be used to:
- Produce interactive dashboards that report basic statistics such as procurement spend by department or category, the kinds of procurement processes used, and the length taken for each process.
- Look for potential corruption or fraud risks using red flag analysis
- Improve the diversity of procurement by reporting on, and developing strategies to improve, the number of bidders or contract winners from particular marginalised communities.
- Assess and improve the environmental impact of procurement.
Evidence that government procurement data is being analysed in these ways may take the form of:
- Interactive online tools;
- Business processes that make decisions based on data analysis;
- Reports that demonstrate advanced analysis (more than simple summary statistics or counts of procurements)
Note that the analytic tools used by government may or may not be public, and may or may not be based on data that is openly published. For non-public tools, you may find evidence of them in presentations, press releases or public statements. For public tools, you may find evidence of them on procurement agency websites.
When data is open, analytic tools may be produced and hosted by government, or they may be produced by third parties, including civil society. The shortest route to impact is often when government makes direct use of procurement analytics, and so for this question you should focus first ****on checking for evidence that government is making use of procurement analytics by:
- Checking for dashboards or analytic tools on the website of, or produced by, the procurement agency/agencies identified in previous questions;
- Look for case studies and reports on government use of procurement data, and/or consult experts who may know about how government is making use of procurement data.
Research should prioritise looking for cases of dashboards and red flag analysis, extending to also look for environmental and diversity-related analytics if time is available.
You should also check for evidence of platforms created by third-parties by carrying out web searches for relevant terms. These platforms may be based on published structured data, or might involve scraping or manually collecting procurement data.
You will need to decide upon the appropriate search terms for your country to look for examples of procurement analytics related to diversity and inclusion.
Starting points
- Sources:
- No general sources have been identified for this question, however, The Open Contracting Partnership impact evidence pages provide useful case studies that can help you to identify appropriate search terms or search strategies for your focus country.
- Search:
- "Government procurement dashboard" + [Country]
- [Procurement Agency Name] "dashboard"
- procurement red flag analysis + [Country / Procurement Agency Name]
- 'Sustainable procurement' + 'data' + [Country]
- Diversity keywords + procurement + data [Country]
- Consult:
- Government procurement officials or experts
- Civil society campaigners focussed on procurement
What to look for?
When to give partial answers
Where you locate tools that are designed to be used by government, but cannot find evidence that government is actually using them, you can score the government use sub-question as 'Partially'.
When you find evidence that a particular activity has been carried out in the past, but you cannot locate evidence of current or recent practice, you may score a sub-question as 'Partially'.
- For example, if you find a report providing carbon accounting of public procurement from 2016 that indicates there will be ongoing activities, but you cannot find more recent work, you may score the sustainable procurement indicator as 'Partially'.
Show/hide supporting questions
Existence
- To what extent is there evidence of this kind of data use?
- There is no evidence of this use.
- There is evidence of isolated uses or pilot projects.
Supporting questions: Please provide URLs of the evidence and briefly describe it.
- There is evidence of multiple different uses involving different organisations.
Supporting questions: Please provide URLs of the evidence and briefly describe it.
- There is evidence that these uses are widespread, regular and embedded.
Supporting questions: Please provide URLs of the evidence and briefly describe it.
Elements
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Kinds of use:
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There is evidence of government procurement data being presented through data-driven dashboards. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: If dashboards are public, please provide the URL of an example dashboard page.
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There is evidence of government procurement data being used for red flag analysis. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: If there are public online tools used to perform red flag analysis, please provide the URL of an example.
If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.
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There is evidence that government procurement data is being analysed to improve access to procurement opportunities for marginalised groups. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please briefly list any marginalised groups addressed (e.g. women
If Partially or Yes: If available, please provide a URL to a page, tool or report providing details.
If Partially: Please, briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.
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There is evidence of government procurement data being analysed to support sustainable / environmental procurement. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide brief details.
If Partially or Yes: If available, please provide a URL to a page, tool or report providing details.
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User groups:
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There are examples of government using data in these ways (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL or brief description
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There are examples of civil society using data in these ways (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL or brief description
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There is evidence of private sector using data in this way (No, Partially, Yes)
-
Specific features:
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At least one of the examples cited appears to make use of open procurement data. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please, briefly explain your answer.
-
At least one of the examples identified makes use of beneficial ownership data. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please, briefly explain your answer.
Extent
- There is evidence that these uses are having meaningful positive impacts
- No
- Partially
Supporting questions: Please briefly describe the evidence of impact
- Yes
Supporting questions: Please briefly describe the evidence of impact
There are a wide range of ways in which data analytics can be applied in to government procurement in order to deliver improved outcomes. This indicator looks to explore the connections between data availability and data use by asking about a range of applications of procurement data analytics, and about whether these uses involves government or civil society stakeholders.
We prioritise searching for direct government use of data analytics as evidence suggests that this creates the shortest path to better outcomes.
We have selected four applications of procurement data analytics, put in priority order for research:
- General dashboards
- Red flag analysis
- Analytics to support improved diversity
- Analytics to support sustainable procurement