The TEDective project, submitted by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), won first prize—and €25,000—in the “transparency in public procurement” category of the 2022 EU Datathon competition. TEDective produces visualisations of the EU’s “tenders electronic daily” data (TED), showing the geographical spread of tenders awarded in the EU for a single party (for example a company). The different monetary values of the tenders awarded to a single party can also be displayed in a constellation graphic. Among other uses, it may help highlight possible fraud in public procurement for any interested public servants and civil society.
As Linus Sehn, member of the TEDective team explains: “Although it might seem boring at first sight, TED data reveals crucial information about the economic activity of business and state organisations alike. As there was no Free Software solution making this data accessible to non-experts, this is what we’re trying to do with TEDective”.
The TEDective project also provides a list of other free / open source software packages which do similar jobs. None are completely operational, but could be useful starting points or sources of ideas.
The EU Datathon is an annual open data competition which has been organised by the Publications Office of the EU since 2017 with the objective of creating value for citizens through innovations and the use of open data and to encourage solutions for issues stemming from the growing amount of data that is being shared by governments. The competition is known for attracting a high quality of submissions.
In the “transparency in public procurement” category, this year’s three finalists dealt with TED data, which is the online version of the 'Supplement to the Official Journal' of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement. With thousands of entries of XML files every month, TEDective’s developer team decided this database was lacking visualisation tools for public servants.
TEDective also gives users the possibility to identify similar entities, for example a company registered in each member states under slightly different names. This allows users to see a bigger picture of how public tenders have been awarded throughout Europe. With the rise in concerns over public money spent on digitalisation of public services, these tools could help analyse the legitimacy of certain public procurement schemes.
Other finalists show other uses for Open Data from public administrations. TEDgraph, in second place, traces the amounts and values of awarded contracts all the way to the company owners. It is a visualisation tool combining TED data in a graph with ownership information and a list of sanctioned entities. EMMA, the third finalist, is a prevention and early detection tool against fraud.
Check TEDective presentation here.