Through Commitment 4.3 of the Open Government National Action Plan, the Government committed to undertake a review of Australia’s existing compliance with the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), publish the review for public comment, and implement any agreed measures to increase Australia’s compliance.
On 19 July 2017, Finance released the Review of AusTender data against the Open Contracting Data Standard for public consultation, and on 7 September 2017 we posted the outcome of this consultation and advised that we would brief the Government on potential options for consideration.
During consultation, the Open Contracting Partnership, the body responsible for developing and implementing the OCDS, suggested that the Government consider increasing its compliance with the OCDS by publishing existing contracting data in an OCDS suitable format.
The Government has now agreed that Finance will further investigate opportunities to publish existing contracting data in an OCDS compliant format to increase Australia’s compliance with the OCDS. Finance will progress this work and will advise on progress through this blog, noting that we are likely to continue to also publish the existing data sets on data.gov.au. This completes the actions required under Commitment 4.3 of the Open Government National Action Plan.
We will also keep the OCDS in mind when making iterative improvements to the Commonwealth Procurement Framework and the AusTender platform – specifically the data collection and publication processes and requirements.
I thank all interested parties for their contributions during consultation, and look forward to keeping you informed as Finance progresses this work.
