1. Introduction

The Government of Canada has committed to increasing the transparency of government information by expanding access to Open Data. A National Action Plan on Open Government was initiated by Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) with the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) as co-lead in 2016 and is renewed every two years in order to fulfil this objective. As part of the 4^th renewed National Action Plan, Canada’s 2018-2020 National Action Plan on Open Government, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) is leading an Open Contracting Commitment with TBS.

The Open Contracting Commitment is included in Commitment #2, under Milestones 2.3 and 2.4 of the National Action Plan on Open Government:

• Milestone 2.3 Ensure Canadians have access to open data on Government of Canada procurement
• Milestone 2.4 Explore adoption of common contracting data standards across Canada

PSPC and TBS have agreed to break down Milestones 2.3 and 2.4 into six actionable Open Contracting Activities. The first of these activities will be the focus of this document.

As a part of Milestone 2.3, PSPC has committed to providing 300 contract records that conform to the OCDS in a best-efforts exercise. Due to PSPC departmental stakeholder feedback, the pilot data records have been reduced to 250 (see section 3.7). The contract records are a comprehensive detailed display of data in the procurement process for the Government of Canada. This pilot data includes all phases of the procurement cycle (Planning, Tender, Award, Contract, and Implementation).

The OCDS data fields which the pilot data conforms to, is listed in Appendix A along with the status of each field. The status denotes whether the government information for the pilot data exists, does not exist, or has been omitted. If the data exists, it has been included in the pilot data. If the data does not exist, PSPC will not produce data for the purposes of Milestone 2.3. The omission of data is a result of decisions made between the stakeholders of Canada’s National Action Plan on Open Government.

The purpose of this document is to report on the decisions made and the lessons learned in the process of completing the pilot data as outlined in Milestone 2.3. This document is broken down into the following sections: Introduction, Methodology, and Lessons Learned.

The Methodology section goes through the steps taken in compiling the pilot data. The Lessons Learned section summarizes the lessons learned from completing this project.