Review Comment:
The paper introduces an ontology for the description of public procurement, currently used by two Spanish institutions. It describes the process and the ontology, as well as the two scenarios where the ontology was deployed.
The idea is not particularly innovative and the evaluation is limited but the paper is clear and solid, and I would accept it after a revision. The main issue is that the ontology has not fully proved to be effective and applicable to other contexts.
The evaluation part has to be extended. The authors should discuss the size of the produced datasets, the amount (and quality) of information published in PPROC, to what extent the datasets have been exploited for services to the citizens, which data have been used, how they have been accessed, and so on.
Another aspect that should be investigated is the applicability and extensibility of PPROC to contracts of other EU countries or non-EU ones.
I like the idea of ‘institution-oriented’ ontology. Instead of bringing it in the conclusions, I would suggest authors to move it at the beginning and to highlight it. That is a key (innovative) aspect of the ontology and would strengthen the overall work. Yes, there is a mention at the end of the introduction and of section 2 but it is not very clear.
The comparison to the state-of-the-art is another aspect that could be improved. The authors mention MOLDEAS and ‘several other projects’ on the procurement process, but they do not explain why these projects (and the models behind them) were not investigated. It is not clear why the analysis is limited to PCO and LOTED2. A larger related works section is needed, especially in a journal paper. The authors should also say more about the ontologies they used in PPROC.
There is also another issue to investigate. The PPROC ontology by itself does not impose authorities to publish some information about procurement. That is regulated by law (and might change from one country to another one, and from one authority to another) and consequently expressed into the ontology. The authors should distinguish between what is mandatory/optional by law and how that information was translated in PPROC. Some more examples could be useful in that respect.
Section 4.1 also needs some rework. In particular, Figure 1 suggests a hierarchical organization between all core classes. Even if the property subClassOf only holds between pc:Contract and pproc:Contract the picture is misleading. Some more explanation should also be added in the text flow and, in particular, the authors should clarify the relation with the following subsections and explanations.
Section 4.2 should clearly explain where the proposed contracts’ classification derives from. In general, I would suggest authors to add one example (or more) in Section 4 and to incrementally explain how it was built and encoded in PPROC. The long example in Section 5.1 is more difficult to follow, compared to a step-by-step analysis.
Section 4.5 should definitely be extended. The abstract mentions ‘details of the whole process’ but the discussion is very short. Especially it this is a novel contribution of this work, it should be given more space and relevance.
Minor:
- abstract: the sentences between round brackets could be removed in order to make it clearer and more incisive
- introduction: some EU directives are mentioned but references are missing. In the same sentence, the authors mention ‘certain information that have to be published’. Some more explanations and examples would be helpful.
- Introduction: the part “One of the currently… … … … , it is enough to publish a limited set of announcements” is not clear. Please rephrase.
- In section 3, does it make sense to add a picture depicting the whole development process? Also, it seems that at least two revisions of the ontology were produced. Is that correct?
- Section 4.3 starts with “Two different approaches” and later describes the first one. It is not very clear which is the second one.
- Section 5: The paragraph “Besides these competency… … … to applicable freedon-of-information laws” is not clear. Please rephrase.
- Conclusion: a reference to ‘operational families’ is missing
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Comments
Ontology-based data now being used extensively in Zaragoza
A set of transparency-oriented views have been made available, supported by the use of the PPROC ontology, at:
https://www.zaragoza.es/ciudad/gestionmunicipal/contratos/
(sorry, in Spanish only)