Preparatory Action on Transparency in Public Procurement-new

General information

A Preparatory Action (PA) is designed to test a novel policy idea in an area where the European Union has competency but no relevant basic act exists which would allow the Union to spend any money.

The Publications Office of the EU (OP) was responsible for the implementation of the Preparatory Action “Transparency in public procurement”, which was carried out between 2022 and 2024. 

Transparency is at the centre of this Preparatory Action and is the common denominator of all actions foreseen for its implementation. The Publications office identified four areas of activity that revolve around TED data: availability, quality, readability, and interoperability.

For all four areas, the Publications Office has put forward and implemented various projects, as described below.

Data readability projects

The idea behind the TED data visualisation project was to implement user-friendly, clear and self-explanatory visualisation of relevant data in TED, using graphics, dynamic tools and machine translation. This project entailed measuring data quality, as well as cleaning and enriching data. Read more about it here to see how the project fosters data readability by enhancing TED data visualisation.

Another action under the area of data readability, was the inclusion of Public Procurement challenges in the 2022 EU Datathon, an annual open data competition organised by the Publications Office of the EU, where teams of young people from all over Europe are gathered to stimulate innovation and transform the interaction between citizens and the EU administration. The two challenges for which prizes were awarded were transparency in Public Procurement and Public Procurement opportunities for young people.

Data availability projects

Various interested parties, including researchers and academia, use TED data. The OP wanted to identify and further promote research on public procurement by awarding prizes for published articles on public procurement. The OP initiated the TED Ambassador award contest which focused on "Transparency in public procurement", "Green procurement", "Emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in public procurement" and "Stimulating innovation through public procurement". Find more details about the TED ambassador award winners here.

Additionally, the OP launched a call for research projects on public procurement topics which yielded the following fresh research insights: “Repository of existing projects on transparency in public procurement”, “Transparency and Open Data in Public Procurement: An Analysis of European Union Member States” and “European public procurement (2012–2022): indicators and maps of competition and SME participation for cross-border analysis based on TED data”. 

Data interoperability projects

The Open data service project aims to enable machine-to-machine retrieval of specific public procurement data in RDF format by using modern technologies. Read more about it and find more specific details and examples here. 

By combining these same principles of interoperability and the latest AI-driven enrichment techniques, the project "Public Procurement procedures" gives a more intuitive view into notices and the public procurement procedures. It aims to provide an easy and consolidated access to business opportunities and increase findability through AI and CPV (common procurement vocabulary) enrichment.

https://op.europa.eu/en/web/about-us/procurement

Data quality projects

The production of video tutorials and promotional videos for TED was part of the Preparatory Action.

We have produced 4 video tutorials, namely "My Dashboard"; "Advanced search"; "eNotices2 – Introduction to eNotices2"; "eNotices2- How to fill in a contract notice ". The videos can be visualized here. 

And 3 promotional videos, namely "TED for vendors"; "TED for buyers" and "TED for data reusers". 

The videos can be visualized here. 

These videos were created to provide more guidance to users, share best practices regarding TED features, and raise awareness among users.

Projects overview

 Overall, through the Preparatory Action, the Publications Office promoted innovative projects to increase the completeness and accuracy of TED data, thus completely covering the mandate entrusted by the European Parliament.

A visual illustration of all the projects is displayed below. Some of these projects were also successfully presented at the TED event, "Public Procurement Data Superpowers: Transparency in public procurement – Harnessing artificial intelligence" in April 2024.

You can click on the different projects to find out more.