abigailhaddad/dc-procurement

DC contracts, purchase orders and payments

Records published by the District of Columbia's Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP) on its Contracts and Procurement Transparency Portal, as Parquet tables. This is an unofficial copy. The portal is the authority; where the two disagree, the portal is right.

• Code and method: https://github.com/abigailhaddad/dc-software-procurement
• Explorer: https://dc-procurement.pages.dev
• Raw portal responses and weekly history: https://huggingface.co/datasets/abigailhaddad/dc-procurement-raw

As of

Pulled from the portal on 2026-11-02. Rebuilt weekly, so the numbers below are for that pull and will move.

Tables

Table	Rows	One row is	Covers
contracts	7,544	One option period of a contract (4,229 contracts)	Periods starting 2020-10-01 to 2026-10-27; awarded 2016-01-01 to 2026-10-30
purchase_orders	243,611	One purchase order	Ordered 2012-10-01 to 2026-11-02
payments	885,916	One voucher line (871,792 distinct ids)	Paid 2016-10-06 to 2026-11-02
solicitations	16,274	One solicitation, open or archived	Closing 2012-10-01 to 2026-11-30
documents	58,324	One document attached to a contract	Links to the portal; the files are not copied
nigp_classes	266	One commodity class	Lookup for the NIGP codes

All identifiers (id, contract_number, po_number, document_id, ...) are text, exactly as the portal publishes them. Open the files as Parquet. Amounts and dates are parsed from the portal's text, and each parsed column sits beside the text it came from.

How it is collected and kept

A GitHub Action pulls the portal every Monday: every commodity class for contracts and purchase orders, the whole payments table, and open and archived solicitations. A pull is merged into the archive, never swapped for it. A row the portal stops returning is kept and marked listed = false, with first_listed and last_listed dates. 1,297 contract periods, 5 purchase orders and 4 payment rows are marked that way in this pull.

The portal is a rolling window, not an archive. On 1 October 2026, when the fiscal year turned, it stopped returning part of its contract periods. 1,297 were put back from earlier pulls and from the portal's detail pages, and are marked with recovered_on. The earliest contract period in this data starts 2020-10-01.

Payment ids repeat, so do not de-duplicate on id. A revised payment comes back under its old id and replaces its old rows. A revised purchase order comes back under a new -Vn number, and the old version is replaced.

Before anything is published, the tables are checked against the raw archive (counts, totals, a sample of rows field by field). A pull that returns far fewer rows than the archive holds fails and publishes nothing.

Things that are easy to get wrong

• A contract row is an option period, not a contract. Summing amount across rows double counts. base_amount and period_kind mark the base period.
• Most payments carry no contract number. 45% do, so a join from payments to contracts covers about that share of the payment lines.
• voucher_amount and check_total are different. check_total repeats on every line the check covers. Summing it gives about 3.5 times the amount actually paid.
• Commodity codes are assigned by the buyer and applied loosely.
• Option-period amounts often disagree with the contract paperwork. The project shows only base-period amounts, and corrected_amount, same_award_as and correction record hand-checked errors, each with a source in corrections.yaml in the repo.
• Payment vendor names are often cut off at a fixed length, as the portal gives them.
• Names are as published. Agency names the portal gives only as an abbreviation or variant spelling are mapped to one name in agency, and the published value stays in agency_as_published.
• The portal's data has gaps. It does not publish everything the District buys, and this copy cannot be more complete than the portal.

People in the data

The portal publishes the names of contracting officers and solicitation specialists, and the names of vendors and payees, which include individual people and sole practitioners (physicians and consultants paid under their own names, for example). They are here as the portal has them. Left out of this copy: contracts: of_interest, of_interest_detail; solicitations: specialist_email, specialist_phone.

Terms

OCP publishes these records on its portal. This copy adds no license. The data.gov catalog entry for the portal, published by OCP, lists CC BY 4.0, as of its last modification (2022-02-16). That is the catalog's description of the portal data. The portal's own terms were not found when this card was written. Check them before reusing the data, and credit the District of Columbia Office of Contracting and Procurement.

Columns

contracts

Column	Where it comes from
id	The id DC's site gives the option period (base64 of contract number and period name)
contract_number	contractNumber
title	title
vendor	vendor
agency	agencyNames, joined with '; ' when there are several, with abbreviated and variant names mapped by agency_names.yaml
agency_as_published	agencyNames exactly as published, joined with '; '
option_period	currentOptionPeriod, as typed by the District
start_date	startDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
end_date	endDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
award_date	awardDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
start_fiscal_year	District fiscal year (1 October to 30 September) in which start_date falls
amount	contractAmount, parsed from text such as '$1,234.50'; the amount authorised for this option period
amount_text	contractAmount exactly as published
nigp_codes	commodityCodes on the search listing, as published
nigp_classes	First three digits of each code in nigp_codes
contract_type	contractType, from the contract's detail page
market_type	marketType, from the contract's detail page
contracting_officer	contractingOfficerName, from the contract's detail page
documents	Number of attachments listed on the detail page for this option period
portal_url	This option period's page on DC's site
listed	Whether DC's site returned this row in its search on the latest pull. A row it no longer returns comes from an earlier pull; its detail page may still open
first_listed	First pull that returned it, where recorded. Not yet recorded for contracts (see docs/NEXT_STEPS.md)
last_listed	Last pull that returned it
recovered_on	Set when the row was put back after DC's site stopped returning it in its search
period_kind	Not from DC's site. 'base' when option_period starts with 'Base' and does not mention an option; 'option' when it mentions an option and does not start with 'Base'; 'unclear' otherwise (labels such as '2' or 'N/A')
base_amount	Not from DC's site. The amount totals use: for a base period, corrected_amount where there is one and amount otherwise; empty for option and unclear periods, for rows that same_award_as says are counted under another number, and for a second listing of the same base period (same dates, label differing only in case). Option-period amounts are left out because a random sample found about three in ten disagreed with the District's own paperwork (see the About page)
corrected_amount	Not from DC's site. The amount the District's own paperwork gives for this period, where corrections.yaml records that DC's figure contradicts it; empty otherwise. Applied only while amount_text still reads as it did when checked
same_award_as	Not from DC's site. Set when corrections.yaml records that this row is the same award as another contract number, which totals count instead; empty otherwise
correction	Not from DC's site. The document corrections.yaml cites for corrected_amount or same_award_as

purchase_orders

Column	Where it comes from
po_number	poNumber; a revised order carries a -V suffix
agency	agencyName, with abbreviated and variant names mapped by agency_names.yaml
agency_as_published	agencyName exactly as published
supplier	supplierName
nigp_code	commodityCode
nigp_class	First three digits of nigp_code
fiscal_year	fiscalYear, as published (e.g. FY2026), as a number
ordered_date	orderedDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
po_total	poTotal, parsed
po_total_text	poTotal exactly as published
listed	Whether DC's site returned this row in its search on the latest pull. A row it no longer returns comes from an earlier pull; its detail page may still open

payments

Column	Where it comes from
id	The id DC's site gives the payment line. Not unique: several lines can share one
agency	agencyName, with abbreviated and variant names mapped by agency_names.yaml
agency_as_published	agencyName exactly as published
contract_number	contractNumber; empty on most rows
vendor	vendorName, as published (often cut off at a fixed length)
po_number	poNumber
voucher_number	voucherNumber
payment_date	paymentDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
fiscal_year	District fiscal year of payment_date (1 October to 30 September)
voucher_amount	voucherAmount, parsed; the amount of this line. Sum this one
voucher_amount_text	voucherAmount exactly as published
check_total	paymentAmount, parsed. NOT this line's amount: the total of the whole check or ACH run, repeated on every line in it. Do not sum
payment_number	paymentNumber, as published (masked by DC's site)
listed	Whether DC's site returned this row in its search on the latest pull. A row it no longer returns comes from an earlier pull; its detail page may still open

solicitations

Column	Where it comes from
solicitation_number	solicitationNumber, as published. Most are an id DC's site gives the posting (Doc123456); some are a procurement number (DCKA-2026-B-0157). Not unique: the same number can appear in two archive years
title	title, with leading and trailing spaces removed. Some titles carry a control character (\x1a) where DC's site lost a dash or apostrophe; it is kept as published
agency	agencyNames, joined with '; ' when there are several, with abbreviated and variant names mapped by agency_names.yaml. Empty when DC's site lists none
agency_as_published	agencyNames exactly as published, joined with '; '
market_type	marketType, as typed by the District (spellings vary; some rows have a commodity code or a category typed here)
closing_date	closingDate, parsed from M/D/YYYY
closing_date_text	closingDate exactly as published
closing_time	closingTime exactly as published
fiscal_year	The archive year DC's site filed a closed solicitation under (ArchivedFiscalYear, e.g. FY2025), as a number. Empty for open solicitations
is_open	True when DC's site returned the solicitation in its search for open solicitations on the latest pull; false when it came from the archive of closed ones
specialist	specialist.name: the contract specialist DC's site names for questions

documents

Column	Where it comes from
contract_number	contractNumber of the option period the document is filed under
contract_id	The id DC's site gives that option period
document_id	The id DC's site gives the document
name	Document name as published
category	The category DC's site writes into the name ('Contract Award', 'Modifications', 'D&Fs', ...); empty when the name does not follow DC's site's pattern
url	Direct link to the PDF on DC's site
listed	Whether DC's site still returns the option period in its search