After more than a year of delay, the Public Procurement Agency has begun publishing data on public tenders on the Open Data Portal in an open, machine-readable format.
This requirement stems from the new Article 38 of the Public Procurement Act, which was adopted in 2023 and entered into force in October 2024. It is directly linked to the implementation of European Union law in the field of public procurement, specifically Directive 2014/24/EU.
The legislature has provided a generous twelve-month period for preparation and the development of a technical solution for the creation and publication of data in accordance with the current version of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). However, this mandatory provision of national law will not be complied with by the end of 2025.
As an organization that has been working on issues of transparency and accountability in public procurement for over two decades, in the summer of 2025, Transparency International Bulgaria called on the leadership of the Public Procurement Agency to fulfill its obligations. As of the beginning of 2026, the Public Procurement Agency has begun to publish data on public procurement in the Open Data Portal regularly.
Why is this important?
Open data offers new opportunities for oversight and transparency.
With the help of analytical tools, institutions, citizens, the media, and businesses can more easily monitor public procurement, analyze the spending of public funds, and identify risks of corruption and suspicious patterns.
By applying analytical tools to open data, government agencies, citizens, the media, and the business community can easily monitor public procurement and oversee the spending of public funds. By making it easier to track corruption risks, patterns, and trends, open data helps increase transparency, integrity, and efficiency in public procurement.