Open AccessTheyBuyForYou platform and knowledge graph: Expanding horizons in public procurement with open linked data
Author(s) -
Ahmet Soylu,
Óscar Corcho,
Brian Elvesæter,
Carlos Badenes-Olmedo,
Tom Blount,
Francisco Yedro Martínez,
Matej Kovacic,
Matej Posinković,
Ian Makgill,
Chris Taggart,
Elena Simperl,
Till Christopher Lech,
Dumitru Roman
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
semantic web
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.862
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 2210-4968
pISSN - 1570-0844
DOI - 10.3233/sw-210442
Subject(s) - open data , procurement , linked data , transparency (behavior) , publication , metadata , open government , computer science , business , interoperability , context (archaeology) , knowledge management , openness to experience , public sector , reuse , data science , world wide web , semantic web , marketing , engineering , political science , paleontology , computer security , advertising , law , biology , psychology , social psychology , waste management
Public procurement is a large market affecting almost every organisation and individual; therefore, governments need to ensure its efficiency, transparency, and accountability, while creating healthy, competitive, and vibrant economies. In this context, open data initiatives and integration of data from multiple sources across national borders could transform the procurement market by such as lowering the barriers of entry for smaller suppliers and encouraging healthier competition, in particular by enabling cross-border bids. Increasingly more open data is published in the public sector; however, these are created and maintained in siloes and are not straightforward to reuse or maintain because of technical heterogeneity, lack of quality, insufficient metadata, or missing links to related domains. To this end, we developed an open linked data platform, called TheyBuyForYou, consisting of a set of modular APIs and ontologies to publish, curate, integrate, analyse, and visualise an EU-wide, cross-border, and cross-lingual procurement knowledge graph. We developed advanced tools and services on top of the knowledge graph for anomaly detection, cross-lingual document search, and data storytelling. This article describes the TheyBuyForYou platform and knowledge graph, reports their adoption by different stakeholders and challenges and experiences we went through while creating them, and demonstrates the usefulness of Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies for enhancing public procurement.