United Kingdom
Background
The UK is committed to Open Government and is a world leader in providing access to information, civic participation and public accountability. As a founding member of the Open Government Partnership, we know that opening up government is a powerful way of building trust and bringing people together, both nationally and locally. It helps build strong communities, drives economic growth, and improves government efficiency and service delivery.
Committing to the innovative pursuit of open government reform in the UK is also a foundation to promote and support the strengthening of democracy and transparency internationally.
In its second OGP National Action Plan, the UK committed to adopting Open Contracting principles and to implementation of OCDS in the third National Action Plan. Open Contracting is also a critical part of delivering the government’s commitments for transparency in procurement.
The UK is an active contributor to the C5, leading work in 2017 on establishing a common baseline for the C5 OCDS implementation projects.
Philosophy
especially small businesses.
Contracts Finder, the single publishing portal for all public sector procurement opportunities, is the focus of the UK Open Contracting initiative. Contracts Finder was established to advertise public sector procurements to SMEs and provide greater accountability to the taxpayer by providing transparency of contract opportunities and awards across the public sector.
Public sector buyers have to publish information about contracts over certain thresholds (£10,000 in Central Government and £25,000 in the wider public sector) on Contracts Finder. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own dedicated public sector procurement websites.