Alternative estimation of "public procurement advertised in the Official Journal as % of GDP" official indicator using open government data

This article aims to share some findings about the potential value that can be obtained from the aggregation of public procurement data at a pan-European scale. The period of calculation of the "public procurement advertised in the Official Journal as % of GDP" official indicator could be significantly shortened and the cost of production brought down by harnessing the power of open data. The value of public procurement openly advertised in six countries has been calculated for three different types of prices published in the contract award notices submitted to the OJ. The three rounds of calculations have been compared against the official data released by Eurostat. This article shows how the calculation and discussion of official economic indicators becomes possible for an individual or organization (Euroalert.net) thanks to the availability of open government data (TED), open source software and cloud tools (Google BigQuery) that empower citizens and drive innovation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.