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Commitment 12 progress report: December 2019

Open Government Partnership New Zealand National Action Plan 2018-2020

Progress report : October – December 2019

Commitment 12: Open Procurement

Lead agency: The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)

Objective: To publish the data on government-awarded contracts that is currently publicly available on the Government Electronic Tenders Service (GETS) as open data.

Ambition: It will be easy for people to find and access published GETS information for contracts awarded by government agencies that are subject to the Government Rules of Sourcing. This will increase the level of trust the public has in procurement as it will be possible to analyse what contracts government agencies are awarding, what the expected spend is and which businesses have been awarded contracts.

OGP values: Transparency and Accountability, Technology and Innovation

Milestones

Milestone 1

Design with Stats NZ and the public a more usable format for this data.

Start/End dates: October 2018 - June 2019

Progress: Complete

Milestone 2

Publish the results of the first milestone, for example information on what format the data will be released in and if we need to publish supporting material to help people interpret the data.

Start/End dates: July 2019 - December 2019

Progress: Complete

Milestone 3

Publish the Contract Award notices online in the agreed usable format.

Start/End dates: June 2020 - On-going

Progress:  Underway

 

What we have been doing

  • In early November, New Zealand Government Procurement and Property (NZGPP) released the first procurement open data report on the MBIE website. Open data was provided for the period 1 July 2019 to 30 September 2019. We will update the report quarterly. A schema was also provided to help people navigate and interpret the data.
  • In September prior to the release of the report, we worked closely with government agencies to inform them of the work, and provide an opportunity to check the data.
  • On 6 November, we emailed our key stakeholder group to let them know the report was available. We received a suggestion from our stakeholders to release historical data and commenced considering how we could achieve this.
  • On 15 November, we published a newsletter item on the NZGPP website and included information on GETS about the release of the first report including links to where people could access it. We responded to agency enquiries via our Account Managers and email helpdesk.
  • On 4 December, we invited Duncan Dewhurst from the Open Data Services Co-operative to run a workshop with us to help align our data with the Open Data Contracting Standard (the Standard). We will commence mapping our fields to the Standard in January 2020.
  • We have been planning the next steps for early 2020. This includes how we will engage with, and respond to our stakeholders’ suggestions such as the release of historic data, improving open data quality, and alignment with the Standard.

How we are including diverse voices

  • We are working closely with our key stakeholders and will look to bring them together in early 2020. We are listening to their suggestions and considering how we can respond.

How we are keeping diverse communities informed

  • We are communicating with our stakeholders via an email list and keeping them up-to-date with our progress including the release of open data reports.
  • As new stakeholders make contact with us, we will invite them to participate in our stakeholder group.

What's next?

  • We will release the next quarterly report in January 2020.
  • We are considering how we could release historic data in line with the April 2020 quarterly release.

Links - Evidence of progress and milestones achieved

New Zealand procurement open data report:

New Zealand's Plan