Country ISO code in OCDS?

[Anders Pedersen]

Hi everyone, 

At NRGI I am currently examining some of the standardization questions around extractives revenue data, which is today mostly available without a structure - for example: https://eiti.org/files/Mongolia-2012-EITI-Report.pdf. 

Question on the OC standard 1.0: http://ocds.open-contracting.org/standard/r/1__0__RC/en/schema/reference/

Is there a specific reason why CountryName is added as text and not as ISO code - http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes/country_codes_glossary.htm

Or have I misunderstood this?

Best,

Anders

[Tim Davies]

Hello Anders,

Would be great to hear your experience of exploring this. For the final stages of the initial Omidyar funded grant on OCDS we're looking at how extractives contracts map to the standard before the end of the year - so insights on this incredibly useful.

In terms of country codes, I think the main reason here was that the country name sits within an address block, where it might be read by users to put the address on things when sending in bids etc. rather than being focussed on geocoding or machine-reading.

There remains a wider question of exactly how the standard should handle location data (e.g. where should locations be attached - to organisations? line items? etc., and how should they be attached. Should there be special properties for country code, or should the ISO list be treated as a gazeteer along with other location gazeteers).

If a simple country code field at the level of addresses etc. would be useful, please do add a GitHub issue and hopefully this can get factored in either to final steps on the RC, or probably in next iteration: https://github.com/open-contracting/standard/issues

All the best

Tim

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[Anders Pedersen]

Thanks Tim, 

A few comments inline:

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Tim Davies <tim.d...@webfoundation.org> wrote:

Hello Anders,

Would be great to hear your experience of exploring this. For the final stages of the initial Omidyar funded grant on OCDS we're looking at how extractives contracts map to the standard before the end of the year - so insights on this incredibly useful.

Great. For extractive contracts it will be important to connect this to Project level reporting:

[ProjectName]: Name of eg. oil or mineral project.

[ProjectCode]: A unique id for the project

Projects are de facto and legally different than contracts in the sense that: a) while there might be one key contract, a project is sometimes/often governed by a body of contracts. Additionally, b) a number of countries are implementing legislation around Project as an entity, and so getting a clear role for ProjectName and ProjectCode would be essential IMO. 

Is there a doc for this - or is this simply a matter of hitting up your list of issues? What is your timeline?

In terms of country codes, I think the main reason here was that the country name sits within an address block, where it might be read by users to put the address on things when sending in bids etc. rather than being focussed on geocoding or machine-reading.

Ok, that possibly makes sense. 

 

There remains a wider question of exactly how the standard should handle location data (e.g. where should locations be attached - to organisations? line items? etc., and how should they be attached. Should there be special properties for country code, or should the ISO list be treated as a gazeteer along with other location gazeteers).

If a simple country code field at the level of addresses etc. would be useful, please do add a GitHub issue and hopefully this can get factored in either to final steps on the RC, or probably in next iteration: https://github.com/open-contracting/standard/issues

All the best

Tim

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 7:21 PM, Anders Pedersen <anders...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone, 

At NRGI I am currently examining some of the standardization questions around extractives revenue data, which is today mostly available without a structure - for example: https://eiti.org/files/Mongolia-2012-EITI-Report.pdf. 

Question on the OC standard 1.0: http://ocds.open-contracting.org/standard/r/1__0__RC/en/schema/reference/

Is there a specific reason why CountryName is added as text and not as ISO code - http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes/country_codes_glossary.htm

Or have I misunderstood this?

Best,

Anders

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[Tim Davies]

Hey Anders,

Would be great to hear your experience of exploring this. For the final stages of the initial Omidyar funded grant on OCDS we're looking at how extractives contracts map to the standard before the end of the year - so insights on this incredibly useful.

 

Great. For extractive contracts it will be important to connect this to Project level reporting:

[ProjectName]: Name of eg. oil or mineral project.

[ProjectCode]: A unique id for the project

Projects are de facto and legally different than contracts in the sense that: a) while there might be one key contract, a project is sometimes/often governed by a body of contracts. Additionally, b) a number of countries are implementing legislation around Project as an entity, and so getting a clear role for ProjectName and ProjectCode would be essential IMO. 

Is there a doc for this - or is this simply a matter of hitting up your list of issues? What is your timeline?

So - at present there is a space for project linkages in the 'Budget' section of 'Planning' as documented at http://ocds.open-contracting.org/standard/r/1__0__RC/en/schema/reference/#budget

This allows for a project name, and a code or id, ideally linking across to supplementary project information that would be held outside the contracting record. 

If you would need extra fields / definition changes / tweaks, then as far as I understand the timeline right now is:

• No changes other than error corrections etc. are going to take place at http://ocds.open-contracting.org/standard/r/1__0__RC/ 
  
  
• Suggested tweaks / correction to the Release Candidate accepted via the GitHub tracker between now and at least February;
  
  
• The Open Contracting Partnership will be setting up a governance structure for the standard, and once this is established, it will formally adopt the 1.0 version; I would anticipate sometime Q1/Q2 2015 for this. 
  
  
• They would then start on (a) incorporating good extensions into the standard; (b) starting a revision process based on early adoption; but exactly what form that will take is not clear. I would realistically anticipate Q3/4 2015 for this. 

More at http://ocds.open-contracting.org/standard/r/1__0__RC/en/standard/history_and_development/#development-stages

However, the extensions mechanism should allow use cases that need extra data to be captured to start doing that with shared approaches, prior to formal revision mechanisms being in place...

All the best

Tim