About the project
Data Limitations
About the project
The project “Open Procurement Transparency Portal – OPTP” is a 12 month project implemented by Lëvizja FOL and funded by USAID. The main objective of this project was to develop the open procurement portal to increase transparency on public expenditures. This was achieved by scrapping, aggregating and structuring information on public contracts published by the procurement platform managed by Public Procurement Regulatory Commission (PPRC).
FOL’s idea for the “Open Procurement Transparency Portal” in Kosovo was inspired by the “Open Public Contracts in Slovakia” portal of Transparency International Slovakia.
Data in the Portal
The portal contains information on the public contracts awarded by the Republic of Kosovo since 2010. The portal has a 100% accuracy of data ensured by strictly filtering the data. A total of 48,124 contracts were extracted from PPRC were filtered and processed. Out of 48,124 contracts processed 85.43% were excluded from for technical errors. Major technical errors include lack of date of publication, lack of monetary value, mismatch of the name of economic operator who was awarded the contract found in PPRC platform with the name registered at the ARBK, wrong monetary value, annulment etc. A full list of reasons is provided under the “limitations” tab.After the filtering process, a total of 14.57% contracts were processed in the portal with a 100% accuracy. From 2018 onwards, the portal gathers the data automatically from PPRC through an automated procedure.Since in Kosovo the contracts are not open, the portal offers basic information for every contract that was signed by public contracting authorities in Kosovo.The data in the portal are free accessible to the user in a readable format thus allowing them to analyze and use different types of visualization for monitoring and research purpose.The portal is built to be both upgradable and scalable to meet future requirements.
Limitations of data
The data in this portal are gathered from Public Procurement Regulatory Commission and Kosovo Business Registration Agency. The data were filtered to fit the requirements of 100% accuracy when responding to their categories. All fields and filters are functional but due to lack of data they are not yet in use. In the “Data Limitations” tab we provide a list of irregularities and shortcomings we faced while extracting the data.
The portal does not contain all awarded contracts from the Republic of Kosovo. It serves the purpose to simplify the understanding of the data/numbers when it comes to public expenditures and as such the user should not confuse this portal with the official e-procurement platform from PPRC.
If you find any incorrect information or inaccuracies in our portal, please contact us at: info@levizjafol.org
About the Donor
Open Procurement Transparency Portal is supported by USAID through the Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities (USAID TEAM) activity.
USAID established the five-year Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities (USAID TEAM) activity to support the Government of Kosovo (GoK) to implement anti-corruption reforms and to improve the transparency and accountability of the procurement process in all 38 Kosovo municipalities. USAID’s Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities activity in Kosovo works to strengthen accountability and effectiveness in public procurement as a mean of improving public services and enhancing public trust, especially at the municipal level. By working closely with municipal partners and supporting linkages with the central government, independent agencies and civil society, the activity is strengthening key government champions and promoting local change, creating sustainable impact.
USAID Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities is also supporting eligible CSOs to create, implement and promote innovative ideas, mechanisms and solutions that will contribute to increase the role of citizens and civil society organizations to reduce municipal governments’ vulnerability to corruption, promoting a fair and transparent procurement system, and implementing monitoring activities that improve government service delivery.
DISCLAIMER
This portal is developed by Lëvizja FOL, through a grant agreement issued by the USAID Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities (USAID TEAM) activity in Kosovo. The author's views presented in this portal do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) or the United States Government.
Many thanks!
FOL Movement thanks the Public Procurement Regulatory Commission (PPRC) for the readiness shown during the development of the Open and Transparent Procurement Portal. This portal would not be complete without the cooperation and support of the PPRC.
Additional information
When using the data from this portal to reproduce it, process or create new applications from it, we ask you to provide this portal as a source of information. Any interference with the technical or material nature of this server is expressly prohibited.
Levizja FOL
Str. Andrea Gropa, No.35, 10000 Prishtinë
Email: info@levizjafol.org
Mobile: +386 (0)49 131 542
The portal is owned and managed by Lëvizja FOL.
1. Problems with e-procurement managed by Public Procurement Regulatory Commission
The portal reads the data from the PPRC's e-procurement platform. Since 2016, from PPRC were taken only the notices for contract signing for all contracts that were published in e-procurement. As e-procurement has been in the testing phase from 2016 to 2018, contract signing notices were also published in the old procurement platform managed by the PPRC. From 2018, all contracting authorities are obliged to publish notices for signing a contract in the e-procurement platform. Before 2018, quotations worth below 10,000 euros were not published in e-procurement platform. The e-procurement platform still does not publish minimal contract value below 1,000 euros. However, according to PPRC's annual reports, in 2017 the total value of the minimal contracts contracted by all contracting authorities has reached 2,838,343.07 euros.
2. Problems with the old procurement platform by PPRC
In the old procurement platform were read only contract award notices since there are no contract signing notices. Contract award notices were often canceled by the PRB, but these cancellations were not reflected in these notices thus making many contract award notices as invalid.
3. Updating the data
The portal is updated once a week through an automatic communication system with PPRC.
4. Total number of contracts
The portal will provide information on contracts awarded by the Republic of Kosovo from 2010 onwards. At the time of the launch, the portal contains limited data as the processing of the total number of contracts will depend on the number of problems found in the contracts. Contracts that are found on the PPRC platforms which have problems with the contract value, lack of publication dates, lack of a business name that is not in KBRA and other shortages, will not be processed because they do not meet the criteria of 100% accuracy. These contracts will be cleared manually.
5. Problems with Contracts Value
During the processing of contracts, problems with the value of contracts were encountered. In some contract award notices contracting authorities have published the unit price value instead of the total amount of the contract. These contracts were not processed on the portal and were left for manual cleaning.
6. Mismatching documents
Documents that were processed through the PPRC old procurement platform often were different from the title they were named. As soon as it was downloaded by the developing company, another document was opened, with a completely different name. This has caused problems during the processing due to data mismatches.
7. Lack of the date of signing the contract
A number of notices for signing the contract lack the date of signing the contract. These contracts are not in the portal.
8. Differences in contract procurement numbers
In some contracts, the procurement number has been divided by different characters, such as “- ,/” or different boxes, causing difficulties in reading. These contracts are not processed on the portal.
9. Data on framework contracts
In framework contracts, the contract is divided into several lots, making the total contract amount more difficult to read. As such the number of economic operators/suppliers is higher than one. In the framework contracts, the estimated value of the contract is obtained and recorded as the total value of all the operators which are the winners of that contract, without prejudice to the value of the operator.
10. Number of contracting authorities
About 220 Contracting Authorities have been found in the Public Procurement Regulatory Platform, while around 148 Contracting Authorities are in the E-procurement platform. This has happened because there are several entities in the PPRC platform within an institution, for example the Ministry of Health as a Contracting Authority and the Ministry of Health - the Project Implementing Unit is listed as a separate contracting authority. This differentiation is not presented in the E-procurement platform. For this reason, the "parent" option is used in the portal where all units belonging to a ministry are within the institution as the sole contracting authority.
11. Differences in business names
In the PPRC platform, we have repeatedly encountered cases where the same business name was written differently, in some places adding the preposition “ShPK” and in some cases lacking it. In some cases the name is written in quotes, in capital letters and in other contracts with different names. This has been a problem when processing data for an economic operator. However, data on businesses names in the contract are verified for each business with the Kosovo Business Registration Agency platform (letter-by-letter) to provide the most accurate data for each business contracted by public institutions.
12. Value of contract entered wrongly
Sharing a digit of characters like "." and "," in some cases has hampered the exact definition of the value of some contracts. Furthermore, many contracts had the unit price, so there was no total value for a contract. In the first case, the company that developed the portal has created a special algorithm that has determined the exact price of each contract. While in the second case during the contract search, if the user finds such a contract, he/she can find a footnote explaining how the value of each unit was determined and how much was the foreseen value of the contract.
13. Cancellation of contracts
Contract award notices are often canceled by the PRB, causing the procurement platform to include notifications of a non-contractual contract. The portal has automatically searched cancellation notices. In cases where contracts of the same name are found in both the contract award notice and the annulment notice, they were removed from the portal and have not been processed. These contracts will be processed manually.
14. Cancellation of contract cancellation
In the procurement platform by the PPRC there are notices for cancellation of the cancellation notice. These notices must be verified with its base contract, therefore contracts with the same name as these notices were removed from the portal and will be processed manually.