Edit tender.procuringEntity description

[JachymHercher]

Since the definition of procuringEntity is "The entity managing the procurement", I would expect that every procurement process should have at least one such entity. I think there is currently no such requirement for an OCDS contracting process. Shouldn't there be?

I'm also wondering whether saying "procurement process" instead of "procurement" in the description ("The entity managing the procurement process") wouldn't be a more consistent use of terminology?

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Editor's summary: Change the definition of procuringEntity to "The entity managing the procurement process"

[jpmckinney]

@JachymHercher Introducing a new required field would have to wait for version 2.0, as we aren't introducing backwards-incompatible changes before then. While there may always be a procuring entity, it may not always be known, e.g. if the dataset is being constructed by a civil society organization based on information that does not declare the procuring entity.

We can consider adding 'process' to the field definition. I'll change the issue title to reflect that.

[JachymHercher]

2.0 change - sure.

"Not being known" - this argument could probably be applied to any field, no? For example, just as well, the procuringEntity might be known (e.g. a central purchasing body), but the buyer is not. However, buyer is a required field, right? Why treat these differently? I'd argue both are basic information about the process.

[jpmckinney]

I don't believe buyer is required.

[JachymHercher]

Ah, ok, then I'm wrong, nevermind :).

[yolile]

Another issue with the procuring entity definition is that it says:

"The entity managing the procurement. This may be different from the buyer who pays for, or uses, the items being procured."

But the buyer's definition only says:

"A buyer is an entity whose budget will be used to pay for goods, works or services related to a contract. This may be different from the procuring entity who may be specified in the tender data."

So, the procuring entity definition suggest that the buyer can be the one who pays or the one who uses, but the buyer definition only says that the buyer is the one who pays, what is correct, so I think that we need to update the procuring entity definition to be consistent with the buyer one.

[jpmckinney]

Related: #825

[ColinMaudry]

All in all, for v1.2, this will be the new definition of procuringEntity:

The entity managing the procurement process. This may be different from the buyer who pays for , or uses, the items being procured.

[ColinMaudry]

The definition must also be edited in the party role codelist.

[jpmckinney]

@ColinMaudry Like #825, can you also have a look at the glossaries, etc. mentioned in #827? I would be more confident in the re-definition if we had a comparison table with other definitions.

[ColinMaudry]

OK, I hold it so that we can improve it further with the glossary crosswalk.

[JachymHercher]

Don't we want "The entity managing the contracting process", not "The entity managing the procurement process"? I think my initial comment was stuck in the EU :-).

More importantly, in a simple procurement procedure, should publishers be declaring an organisation as a 'buyer' and also as a 'procuringEntity', or do we want to have a 'procuringEntity' only if it is different from the buyer? This very much depends on the overall approach in #825 and should be done the same way also in #548 (comment).

[jpmckinney]

Good catch – we should broaden the semantics to "contracting process" (the term procuringEntity is more narrow, but we can't change the term in 1.2).

For simple procedures, I would recommend populating buyer and not tender/procuringEntity, unless the local legislation or local authorities consider it appropriate and correct to populate both with the same organization.

[JachymHercher]

Should the latter be reflected in a normative "should" or a non-normative text somewhere?

[jpmckinney]

Yes, we can add a "should" statement to tender/procuringEntity.

[ColinMaudry]

Not sure it's ideal, but here are the terms mapped to tender.procuringEntity and partyRole/procuringEntity in the glossary crosswalk (direct link to the row)

MAPS definition (3)	UNCITRAL definition (17)	eForms term (46)	eForms definition (46)	eForms codelist (6)	eForms code label (6)	eForms code def (4)
A public entity (agency) conducting procurement in compliance with the applicable law. The terms “procuring agency” or “procurement body” are often used synonymously. Procuring entities can belong to any level of government (national, provincial or municipal level). They can represent different arms of government (branches, ministries, departments, etc.) or they could be constituted as state-owned enterprises or bodies.	Defined in the Model Law as: “Option I (i) Any governmental department, agency, organ or other unit, or any subdivision or multiplicity thereof, that engages in procurement, except ...; [and] Option II (i) Any department, agency, organ or other unit, or any subdivision or multiplicity thereof, of the [Government] [other term used to refer to the national Government of the enacting State] that engages in procurement, except ...; [and] (ii) [The enacting State may insert in this subparagraph and, if necessary, in subsequent subparagraphs other entities or enterprises, or categories thereof, to be included in the definition of ‘procuring entity’];” For the explanation of the term “procurement”, see # 58 above.	BT-740 Buyer Contracting Entity	The buyer is a contracting entity.	Organisation role	Central purchasing body awarding public contracts or concluding framework agreements for works, supplies or services intended for other buyers--Central purchasing body acquiring supplies and/or services intended for other buyers	Contracting authority procuring activities conducted on a permanent basis, in one of the following forms:... the award of public contracts or the conclusion of framework agreements for works, supplies or services intended for contracting authorities;--Contracting authority procuring activities conducted on a permanent basis, in one of the following forms:(a) the acquisition of supplies and/or services intended for contracting authorities.

[ColinMaudry]

All the definitions in other glossaries tend to boil down to:

A public entity that engages in procurement.

[ColinMaudry]

I've also used the OCDS definition of selective ("Only qualified suppliers are invited to submit a tender."):

Only chosen suppliers are invited to submit a tender.

[jpmckinney]

Where does "chosen suppliers" come from?

[ColinMaudry]

supplier or suppliers of its choice

Both the current OCDS definition and the GPA definition describe limited tendering as a method whereby the buyer chooses (not "select") certain suppliers. I simply (naively?) translated "of choice" into a past participle.

[jpmckinney]

Ah, I got confused; in #571 (comment) you referred to 'selective', not 'limited', but you meant using the definition of 'selective' as inspiration.

On second thought, it might not be clear who is doing the choosing, whereas people familiar with procurement processes understand that "qualified suppliers" is based on pre-qualification/selection criteria.

So, perhaps, after all, we should follow the GPA text more closely:

The buyer or the procuring entity contacts a supplier or suppliers of its choice.

cc @JachymHercher

[jpmckinney]

I'm not sure it's been clearly stated in this discussion, but the reasons for preferring only setting the buyer field in cases where the buyer and procuring entity are identical are:

1. There are more use cases related to the buyer. Publishers ought to be encouraged to publish this common field in preference to the procuringEntity field.
2. In many jurisdictions, for simple procedures, the buyer is disclosed and the procuring entity is understood to match. As such, it is already current practice to omit the procuring entity in such cases.
3. The procuring entity (when not identical to the buyer) is a central purchasing body or another organization that does the "preparation and management of procurement procedures on behalf and for the account of the [buyer] concerned". If a user wants to analyze such organizations, then setting the procuringEntity field to the buyer organization would "pollute" this field, and require data cleaning.
4. More broadly, the buyer organization by default takes multiple roles in a procurement procedure (the respondent to any enquiries, requests for documents, etc.) and it is unnecessarily verbose to disclose all these roles for every buyer.

[jpmckinney]

Closed by #1163

[JachymHercher]

In the worked example in https://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/guidance/map/organizational_units/#using-the-organization-building-block, the organization in the example has roles equal to 'buyer' and 'procuringEntity'. However, as exaplained in #571 (comment), it should only have 'buyer'. #1404 corrects it.

[jpmckinney]

Re-closing as the PR is a separate issue (related to this one).