BT-740: Buyer Contracting Entity

[ColinMaudry]

eForms has a code list for organization roles and subroles. On top of these roles, buyers can be (or not) 'contracting entity' via the BT-740 (Buyer Contracting Entity) boolean.

Definition of 'buyer' in the eForms regulation:

Buyer refers to a contracting authority, a contracting entity, a defence contractor, an international organisation, or an organisation awarding a contract subsidized by a contracting authority; unless the above mentioned are an association of organisations that is not an organisation in itself, in which case each individual organisation is considered a 'buyer'.

Definition of 'contracting authorities' in the directive 2014/24/EU:

contracting authorities means the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law or associations formed by one or more such authorities or one or more such bodies governed by public law.

I couldn't find an official definition of 'contracting entity'.

'contracting entity' is not mentioned in related issues (open-contracting/standard#825, open-contracting/standard#571)

I'm not sure how to tie BT-740 back to OCDS roles (buyer, procuringEntity):

• what role does the organization get if BT-740 is 'not-cont-ent' (False)?
• if it's 'cont-ent' (True)?

Any idea @JachymHercher?

[jpmckinney]

I think "Contracting entity" is specific to 2014/25/EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2014/25/oj

[JachymHercher]

I think "Contracting entity" is specific to 2014/25/EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2014/25/oj

Exactly.

what role does the organization get if BT-740 is 'not-cont-ent' (False)?
if it's 'cont-ent' (True)?

If you are a contracting entity, you will be a buyer. If you are not a contracting entity, you could be anything (including a buyer).

[ColinMaudry]

If you are a contracting entity, you will be a buyer. If you are not a contracting entity, you could be anything (including a buyer).

Right, but since this BT not the primary way to designate the buyer, and this concept is specific to EU, I think we should mirror this boolean in the EU extension as a new 'Contracting entity' party role.

[JachymHercher]

Yes, I guess that makes sense. (In eForms, the contracting entity is essentially a subcode of Buyer. It's split into a separate field I guess mainly to avoid having EDIT Organization Role Buyer Legal Type repeatable. Since partyRole is an array, this isn't really an issue in OCDS.)

[ColinMaudry]

Legal basis is enough to contextualize the data. We can discard this BT.

[JachymHercher]

If it were that easy! For Directive 2014/25/EU (sectoral) this is indeed the case, but for the Defence (2009/81/EC) and Concessions (2014/23/EU) Directives you can have either and that's where you need the field. (That's why eForms themselves actually don't contain this field for the Sectoral Directive, but just for the Defence and Concessions.)

[jpmckinney]

Boo. I guess we can use https://extensions.open-contracting.org/en/extensions/organizationClassification/1.1/ since this is not a role, but more the identity of the buyer.

[JachymHercher]

Boo. I guess we can use https://extensions.open-contracting.org/en/extensions/organizationClassification/1.1/ since this is not a role, but more the identity of the buyer.

I'm not sure. If we want to join this boolean under a different codelist, then I think it should be under BT-11 (Buyer Legal Type), as this codelist contains the other "subcodes" from eForms' definition of buyer (i.e. defence contractor, international organization, organization awarding a subsidized contract). (The reason why it's separate is the one from above - so that BT-11 doesn't have to be repeatable.)

[jpmckinney]

I think we model the buyer legal type using the organization classification extension: https://standard.open-contracting.org/profiles/eu/latest/en/forms/F01/#I.4

[jpmckinney]

Noting that presently the draft mapping uses party roles but should use organization classification per discussion.

[duncandewhurst]

The current draft mapping for BT-740 references a buyer contracting types mapping table:

Get the organization for the buyer and add a Classification object to its .details.classifications array. Map to the classification's .id, set its .description to the code according to the mapping in [buyer contracting types mapping table], and set its .scheme to 'TED_BUYER_TYPE'.

Is the following table sufficient?

buyer-contracting-type code	.description
cont-ent	Contracting entity
not-cont-ent	Not contracting entity

[jpmckinney]

I think so, yes.

In Slack I had written:

It looks like eForms invented a buyer-contracting-type codelist just for this BT, with the codes cont-ent and not-cont-ent. As usual, eForms is more explicit, having a not-cont-ent code instead of just an absence of a cont-ent code.

BT-11 uses the buyer-legal-type codelist, which we named TED_CA_TYPE to be consistent with the older TED mapping. That said, I’d be fine with adding another entry to the extension’s classification scheme list for buyer-legal-type.

As for BT-740, since we need a new scheme for cont-ent (buyer-contracting-type), we might as well map not-cont-ent, rather than be implicit as usual. And, yes, we can add the scheme to the extension’s list.

[duncandewhurst]

Ah, yes. Apologies, I forgot that this was discussed on Slack!

[jpmckinney]

No worries - just taking the opportunity to log the discussion here for posterity :)

[jpmckinney]

Looks like this was mapped as a classification as discussed (buyer-contracting-type.csv).