Transactions terminology

[duncandewhurst]

Transactions terminology

This issue is under consideration for the 1.1 milestone.

It builds on previous discussions in #343 and #359

The issue

The current naming convention of the parties to a transaction (providerOrganization and receiverOrganization) could be interpreted as relating to the goods or services procured rather than the flow of funds between the parties.

There is an inconsistency between our use of transaction.amount and the use of tender.value, award.value etc. For consistency we should be using transaction.value

What we are proposing

Rename providerOrganization to payer and receiverOrganization to payee.

Rename transaction.amount to transaction.value

This would involve introducing the new fields, and deprecating the old fields

Example

"contracts": [
    {
        "implementation": {
            "transactions": [
                {
                    "payer": {
                        ...
                    },
                    "payee": {
                        ...
                    },
                    "value": {
                        "amount": 50000,
                        "currency": "GBP"
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    }
]

Outstanding questions

Are there any situations in which there would be a transaction, but the idea of representing this as a payment would be problematic?

Engagement

Please indicate support or opposition for this proposal using the +1 / -1 buttons or a comment. If opposing the proposal, please give clear justifications, and where possible, make an alternative proposals.

Please provide feedback on the outstanding question in a comment.

[mireille-raad]

For the Outstanding question:
Here is a case scenario I saw possible in PPP that can't be translated to payment:
Govt. gives "land-use" rights to a private sector company.

(not sure this is modeled as "transaction" - but thought to share)

[duncandewhurst]

There is draft schema here which implements this proposal.

In addition to the proposed changes above the extension also updates the reference to "Budget Data Package" in the description of the transaction block to read "Fiscal Data Package" in line with the discussion in #378

The extension follows the approach to deprecation described in #401

Assigning to @ekoner to review

[duncandewhurst]

Draft schema updated to fix Budget Data Package references in the transaction.id and transaction.source field descriptions.

[ekoner]

providerOrganization and receiverOrganization use the Identifier block in the current schema. However there is an upgrade proposal Updates to organisation handling in OCDS #368 which impacts how we implement the change.

Everything else looks fine. Assigning to @duncandewhurst to align with #368

[timgdavies]

I've merged this into my staged copy of the schema, with a minor update to use OrganizationReference rather than Identifier for the cross-referencing.