International Procurement

Conference 2023

Advancing your Data

Maturity in Public
Sector Procurement
By: Kabeer Arora (open-contracting@civicdatalab.in)
About us

CivicDataLab works with the goal to use data,

tech, design and social science to strengthen the
course of civic engagements in India. We work to
harness the potential of the open-source
movement to enable citizens to engage better
with public reforms. We aim to grow data and
tech capacity of governments, non-profits,
think-tanks, media houses, universities etc to
enable data-driven decision-making at scale.
Spot the differences!
What is Procurement Data?

The difference in the

description for the tender
 Number of Tenders in CPPP (2011 - 2023)

15,53,423
Why is Number of Bids Received (2011 - 2023)
understanding
Procurement
52,64,037
Data Important? Value of Tenders(2011 - 2023)

₹63,87,416 Cr
Source - Central Public Procurement Portal Dashboard
https://eprocure.gov.in/eprocdashboard/
 Need for Open Contracting Practices in India

India’s open data policy does not

cover government procurement.
Even when procurement data is
available in the public domain, it’s buried
under CAPTCHA and in non-machine
readable formats.

Opaqueness lead to not only corruption

but also inefficiency in public
procurements.

Source - Various Indian Media Houses

The Status of Open Contracting around the world
 The need for Data Standardization - OCDS

Source - https://www.open-contracting.org/data-standard/
The State of
Procurement
Data in India
Fields
Captured by
GePNIC
Fields Captured by GePNIC
How to make the data
work for us?

To be able to derive meaning from data,

the first requirement is to ensure
uniformity in the way data is created and
published.

● following uniform naming

convention for tender titles,
departments can help use the data
for analysis, planning and
monitoring of schemes.
How to make the data Scheme Tagging

work for us?

Important for schemes to be

● Tag the Scheme Geo-Tagging Location

● Geo-Tag the location

● Source of Fund
● Financial Year

Data Beyond AOC? Financial and

Physical Progress? Audits and
clearences? Delays and Costs?

Source of Fund
 Assam: First state to publish OCDS data on data.gov.in

Source: https://data.gov.in/catalog/assam-public-procurement-data
 Open Contracting Data | Assam Public Procurement Explorer

URL: https://assam.open-contracting.in/
 State Public Procurement Portal

URL: https://sppp.assam.gov.in/#/en
 Analysing 30+K Tenders in ASSAM Over 5 years

Dashboard URL: https://superset.civicdatalab.in/superset/dashboard/assam-procure-analysis/

 OCDS gives access to measure KPIs

Measuring Efficiency Gains

● Number of tenders that

convert to AOC
 OCDS gives access to measure KPIs

Measuring Value for Money

● Understanding if there are

savings, cost overruns to the
government
 OCDS gives access to measure KPIs

Measuring Competition

● Understanding the nature

of competition for tenders
 Why Open Data?

Collaboration and Participation facilitates in -

● Monitoring the procurement health

measuring KPIs
● Better procurement planning exercises
● Procurement tagging that allows for
prospective reforms like Green Public
Procurement.
 How to Open Data?

● Open Data (and data standards like

OCDS) allow for data insights that create
space for
○ Cross-collaboration to identify gaps
and solutions
○ More participation for process and
policy reforms

URL -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xiOlkfglXdMHiZ5Mm-2rz7IhUClhEYy3/view
 ● Using procurement as an efficient tool for
delivering public services, goods and works
strategically.
How to make the data ● Using data harness better solutions to
work for us? tackle different civic issues via
procurement.
Study: Gaps in access to maternal and child health services
Study: Protect Vulnerable Communities from Natural
Disasters

Satellite and Losses & Damages

Demographic Data Infrastructure Data Procurement Data
Weather Data Data

Flood Hazard Vulnerability Coping Capacity Vulnerability Government Response

Processing to
Fetching the Data Cleaning the data
extract variables

Data Processing Layer

Data Solution/
Platform
Data Model

Data Listing Page/

Data Repo
Data Analytics
Page
Study: Protect Vulnerable Communities from Natural
Disasters
District Summary

1. Barpeta

Flood Demographic Flood Access to

Revenue Impact Vulnerability Proneness Infrastructure Preparedness
Flood Proneness Score: 0.33 Circle Score Score Score Score Score
Barpeta 1 0.56 0.62 0.88 1
Flood Impact Score: 0.81
Sarthebari 0.89 0.36 0.55 0.91 0.22
Preparedness Score: 0.36 Kalgachia 0.87 0.34 0.7 0.84 0.21
Chenga 0.79 0.3 0.84 0.74 0.21
Baghbor 0.72 0.53 0.73 0.73 0.34
Barnagar 0.6 0.27 0.58 0.86 0.21
District Summary

1. Barpeta
● We see high flood impact scores as well as high demographic vulnerability in the

district of Barpeta.
○ Barpeta also ranks number one in most damages reported as per ASDMA records in the past 5 years.

○ 32,96,224 people were affected by floods in Barpeta between 2018-2022.

● In terms of government response

○ There have been 108 flood-related tenders in Barpeta valuing to about ₹355 crores

○ Of these tenders, over 60% of the tenders were identified as repair, restoration and improvement

tenders.

○ This indicates the need for more long term measures to reduce the impact of floods.

○ Most tenders were concentrated in the Barpeta revenue circle (HQ) of the district.
How data can be used to Green the Public Procurement

● The environmental footprint of Government

procurement is large

● It presents a major opportunity for “going

green” and procuring in a responsible
manner that is better for the environment.

● Data-Driven GPP is crucial

● It helps in identifying

○ High Impact Sectors and Departments

○ Green Tagging the procurements for

various Schemes and Activities

○ Moves away from the L1 method of

procuring and promotes looking at
Life cycle costs over Cost of Acquisition
Way Forward
Open Contracting India is an initiative by
CivicDataLab in partnership with Open Contracting
Partnership that aims at making public
procurement processes in India more efficient,
accessible and participatory.

We do this by onboarding governments to

international data standards for curating and
releasing data, developing platforms to analyse
their data for better decision-making, creating case
studies and resource materials to understand the
gaps and benefits of actions.