Transparency of Public Procurement

a)     a) Designing a “single flow” of procurement contract data and making it available on data.gouv.fr.

The “single flow” was finalised and published in October 2018 and is being piloted by the General Secretariat of the Economic and Financial Ministries. In 2020, the Economic Observatory for Public Procurements (OECP), recorded 169,000 public procurements, amounting to €111 billion. The data is published on data.gouv.fr, in two datasets, one representing “identified public contracts” from 2013 to 2018[3] and the other, public procurements since May 2019.[4]

The French Ministry of Economy and Finances published a website with more than 300,000 sets of “essential data” in June 2021.[5] The aggregation work has been carried out over several years, but is still incomplete, due to technical difficulties and the complexity of gathering all the data from several publishers on a single platform. However, the process is underway, involving stakeholder groups (buyers, companies, publishers) as part of the Digital Transformation Plan for Public Procurement (action 16), and should be finalised by the end of 2022.[6]

Public procurement observatories are online platforms with data on public procurement at the local level. Regional public procurement observatories aim to gather several public actors to raise their awareness of their roles and responsibilities. The observatories also consolidate data and build monitoring indicators. This action is completed. The Occitanie region has created a platform for accessing public contracts: http://scope-occitanie.mystrikingly.com/. The Brittany region is developing a tool based on 50 indicators to manage its purchasing policy, which will soon be available to the public via https://data.bretagne.bzh/.

Other territories have been made aware of the subject via several events involving territorial public procurement observatories,[7] for instance, the Hauts de France region, although no data is available online.[8] The department of Essonne (91) is also on its way to building an observatory.[9] The region Bourgogne-France Comte has its own open data website, https://ideo.ternum-bfc.fr/, with all data and analysis on public procurement.

There is no public evidence available on progress in developing the policy.

a) “Disseminating standards among the international community via Contracting 5.”

b) “Incorporating more countries into Contracting 5 and promoting the use of international standards in those countries.”

France no longer participates in the work of Contracting 5 and the commitment was dropped.

• Transparency in public procurement. Encourage data publication beyond the “essential data” provided for by law. Publish a list of the purchasers who do not comply with the obligation to publish “essential data”.
• Digital transition of public services. Improve support for local governments in accessing funding and initiating their digital transition.