Frequently Asked Questions
Procurement Equity Contracts Dashboard
Not exactly. The 2023 Disparity Study involved extensive manual review by a large research team over the course of a year to link information from multiple state financial systems. In contrast, this dashboard uses readily available award data from OregonBuys only. We plan to incorporate more comprehensive data as capacity allows, and as data systems and collection processes are improved.
No. The dollar value represents the maximum dollar limit on contracts or award amounts, not the amount paid. While OregonBuys has functionality to track actual spend (Phase II), not all executive branch agencies use this feature. Additionally, purchases made using SPOTS cards are not tracked in OregonBuys.
Due to these limitations, award data provides the most consistent and reliable basis for assessing equity in procurement activity.
No. Businesses must be COBID-certified at the time of award to be counted. Certifications obtained later are not retroactively applied to contracts.
No. COBID certification information in OregonBuys shows only currently certified businesses. The certification data used in this dashboard comes from Business Oregon’s archive COBID database. This allows us to determine the exact dates a business was certified and compare those dates with procurement award dates in OregonBuys.
This dashboard was created to comply with Executive Order 22-15 which directs DAS to create a procurement dashboard disaggregated by COBID certification status. Future iterations of this dashboard could include analysis of non-profit contracts; however OregonBuys does not presently have the capability to consistently identify a business as a non-profit.
Grant-funded purchases orders are excluded because the Public Contracting Code does not apply to grants (See ORS 279A.025(2)(d)).
ORS 190 Agreements are excluded because they are agreements between government bodies and are not subject to the Public Contracting Code (See ORS 279A.025(2)(b)).
Statewide Price Agreements and Oregon Forward contracts are considered mandatory-use contracts under the state's Buy Decision process. They are excluded from this equity dashboard because agencies use them without running competitive evaluations.
Executive branch agencies participating in OregonBuys are included. Non-executive branch agencies and those with reporting exemptions are excluded.
Possibly. OregonBuys does not currently have a reliable way to separate out federal funding within contracts, so some reported dollars may be federal.
Not yet. OregonBuys currently tracks contractor data only. Determining the processes for subcontractor data collection is currently in progress and this data will be incorporated once available.
The reporting period starts where the 2023 Disparity Study data ends, to ensure there is no gap in the equity data we are tracking.
Begin by reviewing the General Exclusion Criteria in the Data Overview section on this page. It lists categories (such as grant-funded purchase orders) that are not included in this dashboard. Then check how procurements were flagged for exclusion listed in the Technical Notes section on this page, which explain exactly how procurements are excluded based on how it is entered into fields in OregonBuys (e.g., when the Discipline Type field is set to "Subgrantee (non-procurement)".
If you've reviewed both and your agency's data still appears incomplete, please contact us at DAS.ProcurementEquity@das.oregon.gov for further assistance.
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Technical Notes
How procurements were flagged for exclusion from the dataset:
Statewide Price Agreements: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as a statewide price agreement if the "Organization Allowed to Purchase" field in OregonBuys was "ALL ORG" or if the "PO Type" field in OregonBuys was "B2G Blanket".
Releases: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as a release if the PO Type field was one of the following: "Direct Release", "Standard Release", or "RPA".
Grant-Funded Purchase: A purchase order was flagged for exclusion as a grant-funded procurement if the Discipline Type field was "Subgrantee (non-procurement)".
Awarded Outside of Reporting Period: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as outside the reporting window if the Sent Date field fell outside the reporting period.
Cancelled Status: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as a cancelled PO if the Document Status field was "3PCA - Canceled".
Work Order Contracts: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as a work order contract if either the Short Description or Blanket Description fields indicated it was a work order. The following text strings were used to identify these contracts from the description fields: "woc", "work order".
Oregon Forward Contracts: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as an Oregon Forward contract if either the Short Description or Blanket Description fields indicated it was an Oregon Forward contract. The following text strings were used to identify Oregon Forward contracts from the description fields: "qrf", "qualified rehab", "qualified rf", "orqrf", "orfwd", "or fwd", "oregon forward", "ofc", "orf".
ORS 190 Agreements: A procurement was flagged for exclusion as an ORS 190 Agreement if the Discipline Type field was ORS 190 or if either the Short Description or Blanket Description fields indicated it was an ORS 190. The following text strings were used to identify ORS 190s from the description fields: "iaa", "interagency agreement", "iga", "intergovernmental agreement", "isa", "interstate agreement", "ina", "international agreement", "tribal agreement", "ors190", "ors 190".
*Data Outliers: Procurements with a blanket dollar limit (for MBPOs) or purchase order total amount (for open markets) of over $100 million dollars listed in OregonBuys are currently excluded from the dashboard to avoid displaying potential data entry errors that could have a disproportionally large impact on totals and percentages. These outliers are being manually reviewed and will be included in a future update if confirmed accurate.
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