Entity model

The platform stores nine record types. They are the same in every dataset and in both data lines; a dataset differs from another only in which types it contains and where its records come from.

Jurisdictions

A jurisdiction is a territory with a government: a country, a province or state, a prefecture, a county, a municipality, a district or a township. Each jurisdiction has a level (0 for a country, increasing with each tier), a level type, an ISO 3166-1 country code, an optional parent, and a set of external codes keyed by scheme. Names are stored in English and, where the official name is in another script, in that script with its language tag.

Organisations and roles

An organisation is any party that appears in a record: a government, an agency, a state-owned enterprise, a private company, a special-purpose vehicle, a financial institution, an international organisation or a non-profit. One organisation has one record regardless of how many roles it plays. Roles follow the Open Contracting Data Standard party-role codelist (buyer, procuring entity, supplier, tenderer, payer, payee, funder, guarantor) with operator and sponsor added for long-term contracts.

Because the roles are observed rather than declared, the site presents two profiles of the same record: a government profile for organisations that buy, and a supplier profile for organisations that sell. A state-owned enterprise that does both has both profiles, cross-linked.

External identifiers are stored as { scheme, id } pairs so that a record can carry, for example, a Chinese Unified Social Credit Code and a Legal Entity Identifier at the same time without either being treated as the primary key.

Tenders (contracting processes)

A tender is a contracting process from planning to award. It records the buyer, the procuring entity where that is a different body, the jurisdiction, the procurement method (open, selective, limited, direct), the main category (goods, works, services), the status, the classification code and scheme, the estimated value in its original currency, the tender period, the award date, and the number of tenderers where published. When the source publishes an Open Contracting ID it is kept as ocid.

Contracts

A contract links a buyer to a supplier. It carries the contract type (goods, works, services, consulting, framework, concession, PPP), the status, the value in its original currency, the signature date and the performance period. A contract may reference the tender it came from; a contract taken from a source that does not publish the procurement stage stands on its own.

Payments

A payment is a dated transfer under a contract: payer, payee, amount, currency, the kind of payment (advance, progress, final, retention release, availability, subsidy, penalty, refund), and whether it was scheduled, paid, partially paid, overdue or cancelled. Payments are recorded only when a source reports them; the absence of payments on a contract page means the source did not publish them, not that none were made.

Contract events

A contract event is anything that happens to a contract after it exists: signature, commencement, amendment, renegotiation, a milestone met or missed, a reported delay, a delayed payment, a dispute opened or resolved, a performance review, a penalty, suspension, termination, transfer or completion. Events are dated, typed, optionally valued, and linked to the document that reports them. Contract performance on this platform is the sequence of events, not a score.

Fiscal indicators and observations

An indicator is a defined measure with a stable code, a unit, a frequency and a methodology page. An observation is one value of an indicator for one jurisdiction and one period, with a status flag (final, preliminary, estimated or revised) and a source link. Periods use canonical labels: 2023, 2023-Q1, 2023-03.

Sources

A source is a document or publication: its URL, title, publisher, type, publication date, retrieval date, content hash and archive copy where one was taken. Any record can be linked to any number of sources, each link marked as primary, supporting or derived-from. See Sources and provenance.

Datasets and releases

A dataset is a catalogue entry: title, data line, status, access tier, licence, coverage, citation and long description. A release is a dated, versioned snapshot of a dataset with record counts and file checksums. Records carry the slug of the dataset they were ingested from, which is how the two data lines are separated without duplicating any entity.

How the types connect

jurisdiction ─┬─< organization ─┬─< tender ─< contract ─┬─< payment
              │                 └────────────────────────┴─< contract_event
              └─< fiscal_observation >─ fiscal_indicator
source >─ entity_source ─< (any record)
dataset (catalogue) ─< release ; every record carries dataset_slug