[open-government] Global Campaign for Opening Up Contract Data

Wed Jun 25 13:17:21 UTC 2014

Hi Tim,

Hope you are well and thanks for your reply. Responses in-line below.

On 21 June 2014 04:27, Tim Davies <tim at timdavies.org.uk> wrote:

> Hello Daniela,
>
> The Open Contracting Partnership (www.open-contracting.org), a
> multi-lateral partnership of organizations that OK(f) should consider
> joining as part of this campaigning, have been exploring this space for a
> while. They OCP Community of Practice at http://pro-act.org/ has
> collected together a list of Contracting Portals at
> http://pro-act.org/page/government-portals
>

We have been working closely with the Open Contracting Partnership on the
campaign from the very start :-) While I was not part of the original
discussions (and Felipe can correct me if I wrong), we discussed whether a
campaign would make sense here and how it would support and complement the
work already being done by the  OCP, CofP & Web Foundation (and many
others) by focusing on more grassroots advocacy, community engagement, and
raising public awareness. (Re joining: I have to confess I thought we were
members and if not I know we would be delighted to join!)

Thank you for sharing the government portals link and well done to those
who contributed to it - its an  incredibly useful resource!

>
>
> For the Open Contracting Partnership, the Web Foundation (where I work
> some of the time) have been working on the iterative development of a pilot
> data standard for Open Contracts that might help in making really concrete
> demands for specific documents, and meta-data, about contracts.
>

Quite right and we’ve been directly using (and linking to) the standard and
always have viewed that as the ultimate ask. Obviously, for a campaign we
want to keep the basic ask very simple so we haven’t gone into too much
specific detail but the, at least in our view, the basic aim of the
campaign should be to advocate for adoption of the Open Contracting
standard as developed by the OCP.

>
> For that project the team have been assessing many different existing
> contracting data portals, building a comparison tool at
> http://ocds.open-contracting.org/opendatacomparison which maps out (
> http://ocds.open-contracting.org/opendatacomparison/datamap/) which
> different providers are publishing what fields of data.
>

Again, thank you for sharing and we’ve been using this :-)

>
> Many of the team will be at OKFest, and will have a session to start
> exploring how to broaden community engagement in the developing Open
> Contracting Data Standard, as well as having some space for digging into
> the details of the field specs / data models etc.
>

We are looking forward to participating; unfortunately I was unable to join
the session coordination call a few weeks back due to prior commitments but
I will definitely be there! I have also shared with other members of the
community working on & running open contracting campaigns at a local level
so there should be a wide range of perspectives!

>
> In terms of building an OK(f) campaign - one area to focus, as the
> discussion on Libraries points, may be on specific sectors - and even on
> particular kinds of contract terms that the open knowledge community wants
> to see more contracts include. There are a growing number of resources out
> there on contract monitoring, and thinking about how to tailor some of
> those to monitoring the extent to which contracts increase or diminish the
> commons, alongside focusing on a default of contract disclosure, may be one
> of the most valuable ways to build on the community's strength.
>

Thanks for sharing your ideas here. This is something that I have been
thinking about quite a lot recently, particularly in terms of commercial
confidentiality. I have been meaning to blog about the work Tim Gowers did
<http://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/> to
determine how much universities are paying for Elsevier journal and the FOI
refusals he received on the grounds of confidentiality clauses (h/t
Michelle Brook & Open Knowledge Open Access community).

>
> (As an aside: it would be interesting to know how Open Knowledge came to
> decide on this campaigning focus...and whether there are particular
> contractual obligations on OK from funders around the campaigning activity
> being undertaken....)
>

As part of work supported by several funders (including Omidyar) we have
support for doing advocacy around “public money” but we didn’t have a
specific topic. Last Autumn as part of the Follow the Money Network
discussions, Jonathan (Gray) was talking with folks about several different
areas. Out of that came the suggestion that contracting might be one of the
most compelling to a broader audience. We specifically spoke with OCP in
coming up with this and to ensure this would complement OCP’s efforts. Hope
that clarifies :-)

>
> All the best
>
> Tim
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Daniela Mattern <daniela.mattern at okfn.org
> > wrote:
>
>> Hey,
>>
>> my name is Daniela - I joined Open Knowledge Central in February and
>> before this I have been working for 11 years in Brazil.
>>
>> Open Knowledge wants to run a Global Campaign for opening up contract
>> data? I think this topic very exciting:
>>
>> While I was in Brazil I encountered a lot of problems to opening up
>> contract data - for instance I was working with community leaders in a slum
>> in São Paulo and they were receiving funds from the City of São Paulo, the
>> Federal government and the World Bank to install water sanitation. The
>> community leaders reported that the work was to be done in the whole slum
>> but the construction company didn't do it ... They also reported that the
>> government send a person to evaluate and supervise the work but that the
>> supervision had not been done properly - on the day of the evaluation the
>> company showed the work in some parts of the slum where it had been
>> delivered. They got the approval that the work had been finalized although
>> the work wasn't finished.
>> Then I made Freedom of Information requests to get access to the contract
>> - the problem was, that the tender had been handled by a Ministry and then
>> the contract was administered by a state bank. The Ministry was not in
>> possession of the contract and the bank informed that the whole process was
>> bank secret.
>>
>> I wanted to know, whether any of you has also tried to open up contract
>> data so far and which process you followed. Has it been successful?
>>
>> I also wondered how we could organize a Global Campaign that forces a lot
>> of political leaders to open up the contract data. This would be so
>> important, to my mind: If people had the terms of reference and the
>> contracts they could effectively monitor the work that is being delivered
>> by the companies.
>>
>> I have currently only found a data base of Open Contracts for Slovakia
>> <http://www.opengovguide.com/country-examples/in-slovakia-government-contracts-are-published-online/>
>> - do you know any other examples?
>>
>> Thanks for your ideas!
>>
>> Daniela
>>
>> --
>>
>> Daniela Mattern
>>
>> Open Data Project Manager | skype: e1aste2000
>>
>> *Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org> *
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>
>
> --
>
>
> +44 (0)7834 856 303
> @timdavies
> http://www.timdavies.org.uk
>
>

-- 

Katelyn Rogers

Working Groups Community Manager  | katelyn.rogers at okfn.org
<https://twitter.com/joebloggs> | Skype: katelynjrogers

Open Knowledge *See how data can change the world*

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