Questions and Answers – Workshop for reusers of TED data
17 April 2024
These are the revised Questions and Answers, i.e. replies to questions posted before and during the workshop have been reviewed and may have been regrouped or modified for this written version to allow for a more cohesive and complete response.
Please note that some answers may no longer be accurate, as the Publications Office has followed up on comments made and may have modified its approach accordingly.
The recordings of the workshop and the slides of the presentations are available in the “Agenda” tab.
Documentation
- Is the eForms documentation available for download (one or more documents)?
Answer: eForms documentation is available in MarkDown format at https://github.com/OP-TED/eforms-docs which might meet your needs. - Will you drop the link to the developer portal here, please?
Answer: Developer Portal to create your profile and keep in touch: https://developer.ted.europa.eu/
Developer Docs for information about eForms data etc https://docs.ted.europa.eu/ - Is there any way to subscribe to receive the notifications of the daily publications by mail?
Answer: Demo done.
Link to help page: https://ted.europa.eu/en/help/search-results#create-search-alert - We are mostly using the XMLs to fetch and reuse the TED data and find it very challenging to map what we see in the portal with regards to the XML fields. Is there a detailed, straightforward and consolidated documentation for this somewhere?
Answer: The documentation is available on https://docs.ted.europa.eu/home/index.html - Is there any possibility (document or link) to check the companies that are shortlisted in a bidding process?
Answer: It is possible for buyers to also include unsuccessful tenderers in their contract ward notice – but this is optional in eForms so it depends on the level of transparency by the buyer.
It seems that the European External Action Service is no longer providing this information, though it’s mandatory under their rules. It is not mandatory for EU directives so there are no rules in place. - What is the link to the Data Converter
Answer: https://github.com/OP-TED/ted-xml-data-converter - How can multiple expert search API calls be combined? I.e. query-API responds with an "result-id" instead of a list of results, and then those result-ids can be later processed using set theory. There is a limit in the query string length, sub-queriers are no longer allowed, and therefore only very simple queries can be sent.
Answer: Please provide the details of your queries. (Via the helpdesk or via the chat)
The limits of the search query are as follows:
1) The size of the query by itself is around 100000 characters
2) The size of a phrase match, i.e., what is inside double quotes is 1000 characters
3) A query can have in maximum 2000 clauses. A clause is what is between the Boolean operators (e.g., A OR B is counted as two clauses). - Where can I find documentation about the available fields used in the API? (In Swagger they are just mentioned, but not explained.)
Answer: All search fields are available via the expert search page Link: https://ted.europa.eu/en/expert-search - In relation to Swagger, the notice renderer - For some notices when we try to get the full text in a specific language we get an error: “Bad request/504 ERROR” (Ex: 192408-2024). Will this be fixed so we can rely on Swagger or should we use the Web (html format)?
Answer: We would suggest using the direct link to render the notices. For more information, please read the help page about Notice view - Question: The eForms Data in the Developer Docs do not always correspond with the fields of the API provided in Swagger. Where can I find documentation for the specific valid fields to use in the API?
(E. g. what do the following items stand for: "BT-09(b)-Procedure", "organisation-name-mediator-part", "touchpoint-post-code-environ-legis-lot", "sme-part", "touchpoint-gateway-ted-esen", "BT-135-Procedure", "touchpoint-fax-tender-receip-part", "submission-url-lot", "organisation-person-addinfo-part", "buyer-country-sub", "organisation-tel-revieworg-part", "no-negocaition-necessary-lot", "organisation-tel-mediator-lot", "BT-13(t)-Part", etc.?)
Answer: All search fields are available via the expert search page. Link : https://ted.europa.eu/en/expert-search Please note that you can use search fields based on metadata field. For example, to find the notice where the notice-type= cn-standard you can use the query BT-02-notice=cn-standard. - Question: Could you provide some guidance on how to extract data from the xml files (for fields that are not contained in the csv bulk downloads) since the notice format has been changed? Ideally, I'd like to have a tool that allows downloading selected fields from the xml files - a piece of Python code or similar. Does something like it already exist in a code repository?
Answer: • The documentation for developers is available on https://docs.ted.europa.eu/home/index.html
• The technical information is available on https://github.com/OP-TED
• We don’t have any sample software for reusing our data. - Question: Between the new platform and the old platform there are opportunities that are not published on both (they are either on the old or the new platform). When will that be updated, so that they are published on the new one exclusively?
Answer: All notices have been migrated from the old TED system to the new TED system. - Question: Are there some sample publications that are available in the new eForms formats as well as the old formats? It would help validating our TED data processing codes.
Answer: The converter could be useful. Link: https://github.com/OP-TED/ted-xml-data-converter Most of the notices are in eForms format since October 2023. All notices are published in either the old format or in the new eForms format, there are no notices published in both formats. You can make the following query to find notices in the old format:
• Query: TD in (C E G I D P M Q O R 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 B S Y V F A H J K) https://ted.europa.eu/en/search/result?query=TD+in+%28C+E+G+I+D+P+M+Q+O+R+0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+B+S+Y+V+F+A+H+J+K%29+SORT+BY+publication-number+DESC&scope=ALL&onlyLatestVersions=false In addition, some eForms sample are available on GitHub. Link: https://github.com/OP-TED/eForms-SDK/tree/develop/examples - Question: With regards to identifying notices that belong to the same tender/procedure, is this not done by "efbc:ChangedNoticeIdentifier” that indicates the notice that is changed and most importantly via "cbc:ContractFolderID” which is identical for all notices belonging to the same tender/procedure?
Answer: eForms notices that belong to the same procedure identifier can be found using the search field procedure-identifier (alias: BT-04-notice). BT-04-notice correspond to the tag cbc:ContractFolderID. Note that Planning eForms notices do not have a procedure identifier, as they do not always lead directly to a procedure. Competition notices may link to a Planning notice via BT-125. - Question: When searching for old TED documents on the website, why doesn't it retrieve any results?
Answer: To find old notices on TED, we would suggest to define the search scope “all notices”. - Question: As the field names in the expert search on the TED search page do not have the same names as in the XML-files, could you please advise where (at which position / which field names) the following information can be found in the XML-file?
• country of the tender;
• notice languages;
• name of the awarding authority /buyer;
• name of the bidder; and
• changes / corrections of a notice
Answer: • country of the tender: In the expert search you can use the search field organisation-country-tenderer.
• notice languages: Notice language corresponds to the metadata fields BT-702(a)-notice and BT-702(b)-notice. In the expert search, you can use the search field official-language.
• name of the awarding authority /buyer: In the expert search, you can use the search field buyer-name (alias: AU)
• name of the bidder: In the expert search you can use the search field organisation-name-tenderer.
• changes / corrections of a notice The metadata field BT-758-notice is the ‘Change Notice Version Identifier’ In the expert search you can use the search field change-notice-version-identifier (alias: BT-758-notice). - Question: Where can I find the new calls under the different DGs, especially NEAR, INTPA, COMM.? (After using Advanced Search I am only seeing calls in Member State countries and nothing international.)
Answer: Queries for NEAR: corporate-body=COM and FT="NEAR"
• https://ted.europa.eu/en/search/result?query=corporate-body%3DCOM+and+FT%3D%22NEAR%22&scope=ALL&onlyLatestVersions=false&page=1&sortColumn=publication-number&sortOrder=DESC
Query for INTPA: corporate-body=COM and FT="INTPA"
• https://ted.europa.eu/en/search/result?query=corporate-body%3DCOM+and+FT%3D%22INTPA%22&scope=ALL&onlyLatestVersions=false&page=1&sortColumn=publication-number&sortOrder=DESC - Comment: An even better solution for reusers of the bulk download feature would be if the Publications Office made the data available in HTML format in addition to XML.
Answer: We take note of your request. It’s possible to get the downloadable HTML for each notice via URLs like https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/228503-2024/html - Question: How is it possible that there is a tender without a procedure type or without deadline?
Examples:
https://ted.europa.eu/de/notice/-/detail/225304-2024
https://ted.europa.eu/de/notice/-/detail/225356-2024
https://ted.europa.eu/de/notice/-/detail/225134-2024
Answer: I guess it is meant “How can it be that there is a procurement procedure without a procedure type or without deadline?” Following the Regulation Annex, Procedure Type (BT-105) is forbidden for forms 1-6, 15, 38-40. and only optional for many other forms (7-9, 12-14, 19-22, 32-35).
There is a similar situation with deadlines, and we are aiming at narrowing the rules to ensure the deadlines will be provided wherever needed. - Question: Dates do not always have the correct time zone. What will TED do about that?
Answer: It’s up to buyers to pick the right time zone, as eForms requires a UTC offset (unlike the old forms that assumed a simple but ambiguous “local time”). We can see that some buyers are probably making mistakes, like putting UTC+0 instead of UTC+1 or UTC+2 for countries in CET/CEST.
Unfortunately, TED cannot make any assumptions about the buyer’s true intentions but further buyer awareness is needed, with the support of the platforms they are using to fill in forms. There should also be a rule in future to ensure that the time zone of dates is the same as the time zone as the related time but this doesn’t make a big difference for the vast majority of cases. - Question: We see a lot of notices, which list that they have the information in two languages, for example Lithuanian and English. But the complete text in the two description fields is in Lithuanian.
Can anything be done about this? Either flag it up to the buyer or the eSender? Or would it be possible to check in validation that if a description says that there are two different languages, it cannot be the same text?
Example: https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/-/detail/174446-2024
Answer: It is the responsibility of the buyer to make sure the content of the notice matches the declared language. We don’t control for mixed languages (anymore) in eForms notices.
For that Lithuanian example, it seems they added English for no good reason – the notice should just be in Lithuanian.
Please contact us if you see any systematic problems. - Question: Sometimes, the tender notices don’t contain the deadline for application - Why is this not mandatory for the eForms sender?
Answer: Similar to previous question: older SDKs have fewer rules do the data quality falls short – if you have some examples we can check if the rules are in place for newer SDKs. - Question: In light of data quality, could you please validate eForms and reject documents with empty required fields (at upload)?
Answer: We are progressively adding rules to improve data quality. The later SDK versions have more rules so the quality will improve as buyers (and their service providers/eSenders/platforms) upgrade SDK version. - Question: With regards to data quality - We see quite a number of notices that are invalid, is there no validation of these notices? Should we report these notices? If yes, where should we report this?
Example 1 : https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/178541-2024/xml :
line 271, the award-criterion-type is on 2 lines, the value we get is “price” followed by a carriage return and spaces. The accepted value should be price only.
Example 2: https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/56607-2024/xml :
- schemeName attribute values are wrong :
line 9: we have schemeName=RES, but the accepted value for the attribute is “result”, not “RES”.
line 22: schemeName=”TED”, should be schemeName=”tender”
line 34: schemeName=”CON”, should be schemeName=”contract”
- listNames attribute values are wrong :
line 74: listName=”eforms-country”: we did not find that list on the Ted website, usually it is “country”.
Answer: See previous reply about data quality. We are adding rules but ultimate responsibility for notice content lies with the buyer. Also note that the XML may vary from one SDK version to another, e.g. “eforms-country” was the name of the codelist used until SDK 1.10 https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/1.10/reference/code-lists/eforms-country.html until it was replaced by “country” in SDK 1.11 https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/latest/reference/code-lists/country.html - Question: Where are corrections published?
Answer: Regarding corrigenda to notices, in eForms the latest version of a notice contains the latest information, i.e. the Change notice includes all the existing information plus what has been changed. - Question: In eForms we frequently get the following:
<cac:TenderResult >
<cbc:AwardDate>2000-01-01Z</cbc:AwardDate >
</cac:TenderResult >
But I think we should not get such old award dates. What should we do with such wrong information?
Answer: The cbc:AwardDate element contains a dummy value needed to satisfy the UBL schema, it is not associated to any Business Term and does not have any Business meaning – see also https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/latest/schema/competition-results.html#_notice_result
Which other award dates are in the notice, which can be Used/trusted? The award date to be used, according to the Regulation Annex is the Winner Decision Date (BT-1451), part of the Contract (BG-310) Business Group, defined as “The date of the official decision choosing the winning tender.” - Comment: The minimum/maximum number of participants should also be mandatory fields for everything that is "not open" or "otherwise two-tier".
Answer: We will check with the European Commission if the EU directives require this information for participants for these procedure types (we assume you refer to “Restricted” and “Other multi-stage” procedures). - Question: Should feature request: <cac:Prize> be marked netto or brutto, if tax is included?
Answer: In general amounts in eForms don’t include VAT but we have raised this question with the European Commission as this is not explicitly defined in the eForms regulation for this business term. - Question: Many eForms have a single lot LOT-0001. Can you confirm that LOT-0001 is not a technical lot and that the only technical lot is LOT-000 for markets without lots? Is this an error in filling out the form by buyers?
Answer: There are no rules or conventions regarding the numbering of the technical identifiers of lots. In eForms, every notice must have at least one lot in its XML structure even if the procedure itself does not make use of lots. Each buyer’s application may generate the technical LOT-xxxx identifiers differently, which may or not include LOT-0000. There may also be gaps in the LOT- identifiers – the only requirement is that each identifier is used within the notice. The reason that all notice must have one lot in the XML is because in eForms there is information that now only exists at lot level, for example, deadlines can be specific to each lot. - Question: What are your plans for the next "big" steps (like SDK 2.x with potential breaking changes)?
Answer: Some SDK roadmap information is available at https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms-common/roadmap/ . SDK 2.x will only come towards the end of the year and shouldn't affect the XML structures (SDK 2 is basically about the EFX grammar used for rules and visualisation). - Question: When do you think the long-standing problem of the incorrect form F14 (Corrigendum) will be solved?
Answer: “F14” doesn’t exist in eForms. Every Changed notice contains all the notice information, consolidating the latest version. - Question: Will TED do a better validation of their XML files?
Answer: The TED website publishes the data that are sent by the Contracting Authorities without changing them as long as they pass a number of validations at the reception (i.e. when the procurement notices are submitted). These validations are enhanced and extended progressively but there is always a limit on what can be checked and controlled and it should always be taken into account that the ultimate responsible for the quality of the data published on the TED website is the sender i.e. the Contracting Authority. - Question: Could you please clarify what is the fair use policy to download a notice html? (For example the fair use policy to do a GET of https://ted.europa.eu/de/notice/00177486-2024/html )
Answer:Operation Limits Visualise or download notices from a single IP 600 visualizations or downloads in less than 6 minutes HTTP Requests 700 requests in the last minute Download daily or monthly Packages HTTPS Service 3 concurrent downloads - Question: We sometimes get “HTTP 429 Too Many Requests” errors. This happens completely randomly: sometimes the first time we call the site in several hours, sometimes after a couple of calls, but even though the 429 http status usually indicates that we have reached some quotas this is clearly not the case. Could you please clarify?
Answer: Please contact the TED helpdesk and provide the IP address and the log files. - Question: The Publications Office uses a faster converter when converting to the eForm. Can it not make this available to the TED reusers / sales agents? It would also be desirable if the discussion about this could be resumed on github at https://github.com/OP-TED/eforms-notice-viewer/issues/82 .
Answer: Information concerning the converter is available on https://github.com/OP-TED
TED API
TED Search and data retrieval
Content of notices and eForms
TED – fair use policy
Miscellaneous