Multiple Buyers per Contract

Background

The core OCDS schema provides space for a single buyer to be described at the top level of each contracting process (release.buyer), specified using an OrganizationReference object, which cross-references an entry in the parties array.

Whilst more than one organization may be included in the parties array with the role of "buyer", it is not possible in core OCDS to associate particular buyers with particular contracts.

In some contexts, including Mexican public procurement, it is very common that a contract is paid for by more than one buyer (institution).

This extension provides a way to reference multiple buyers (who should be present in the parties array) at the level of each individual contract.

Extension fields

This extension adds a buyers property to the contract section of OCDS. contract.buyers is an array of OrganizationReference objects consisting of the following fields:

• name - The name of the party being referenced. This must match the name of an entry in the parties section. • id - The id of the party being referenced. This must match the id of an entry in the parties section.

Example

"contracts": [{
  "id": "201709003485",
  "awardID": "1485598",
  "title": "SEGUIMIENTO Y CONTROL DE LOS TRABAJOS FALTANTES CONSISTENTES EN LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE TERRACERÍAS",
  "period": "",
  "valueWithTax": "",
  "buyers": [{
    "name": "Centro SCT Veracruz",
    "id": "09650"
    }]
  }]

Notes

Applications that are not aware of this extension may assume that the organization referenced in release.buyer is the buyer for all contracts in the process.

If there is a lead buyer organization, this organization may referenced in release.buyer. In other cases, to avoid misinterpretation of the data release.buyer should be left blank.

This extension is similar to the Contract Level Buyer Information which adds a contract.buyer (singular) property, for cases where there is a different buyer for each contract, but only ever one buyer per contract.

Issues

This extension is maintained by transpresupuestaria.