Open contracting and OCDS: how modern tender data works

A growing share of the world’s public spending is now published as open contracting data. If you bid on or research public tenders, understanding it pays off — standardised, transparent data is far easier to search, compare and trust than information scattered across inconsistent pages.

What is OCDS?

The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) is a common, machine-readable format for publishing information about public contracts. Instead of every government inventing its own layout, OCDS gives them a shared schema — so a “tender” in the UK, Ukraine or Colombia looks structurally the same and can be compared and combined.

The five stages it captures

1. Planning — the need and budget for a purchase.
2. Tender — the opportunity itself: title, description, category, value, deadline, documents.
3. Award — who won and for how much.
4. Contract — the signed agreement and its terms.
5. Implementation — delivery, milestones and payments.

For a bidder, the tender stage is the live opportunity; the award and contract stages are gold for market research on who wins and at what price.

Why it matters

• More competition — open, discoverable notices mean more firms can bid, including smaller and foreign suppliers.
• Less fraud — transparency makes collusion and rigged awards easier to spot.
• Better decisions — buyers and suppliers can benchmark prices and performance from real data.
• Reliable data — because it’s standardised and machine-readable, tender information is easier to search, compare and trust.

Who publishes it?

Dozens of governments and institutions publish OCDS or OCDS-like feeds — the UK, Ukraine (ProZorro), Colombia, Moldova, Georgia, Paraguay and many more, alongside standards like the EU’s eForms on TED. The list grows every year as more administrations commit to open contracting.

For suppliers, the practical upshot is simple: the same open data that keeps governments accountable also makes it far easier to find the tenders that fit you.