Spanish Public Procurement: legislation, open data source and extracting valuable information of procurement announcements

Abstract

Open Data in Public Administrations and, in particular, the publications of public procurement (tenders) is a source of valuable information for the decision-making procedure. The analysis of public tenders can provide valuable information for the different stakeholders: politicians, public managers, project managers, executives and, indirectly, citizens. Open Data allows the application of Business Intelligent and massive data processing techniques. This study presents the current situation of the Spanish Public Procurement processes and its open data sources available for citizens. The focus of the study is the Request-For-Proposal (RFP) and tender submission related data. The European and Spanish legislation which applies to this topic is collected. The Spanish Public Sector Contracting Platform, which is the web platform where public procurement announcements and their resolutions are published, is explained. The information can be very useful for researchers who want to carry out studies applying massive data processing techniques. A use case is presented using the open data of that web platform with different approaches to demonstrate its usefulness in a Business Intelligent context. Examples describing quantitative, geographic, sectorial competitiveness and interregional mobility analysis are presented illustrating possible applications.