Organization identifiers

Normally, publishers collect legal identifiers from the organizations that are part of the contracting process. Organization identifiers can be provided in OCDS by identifying the organization registers used in the source data, choosing an appropriate organization register prefix for each one, and identifying the organizational ID for each registry or list and organization in the data.

Use org-id.guide to find the code for the register your identifiers are drawn from. If no code exists for the register, contact the Data Support Team to register an organization list.

If a publisher chooses not to register an organization list with org-id.guide, the publisher ought to describe the organization list in a publication policy, and needs to ensure that its prefix doesn't collide with a list code in org-id.guide.

Worked example

The Government of the UK uses identifiers from Companies House to uniquely identify suppliers. Companies House has an entry in org-id.guide, which specifies the "GB-COH" code for the registry. IBM has been assigned the company number ‘04336774’ by Companies House. The globally unique organization identifier for IBM can then be expressed as in the identifier section in the sample below:

{
    "identifier": {
        "scheme": "GB-COH",
        "id": "04336774",
        "legalName": "IBM LP LIMITED",
        "uri": "http://data.companieshouse.gov.uk/doc/company/04336774"
    },
    "additionalIdentifiers": [
        {
            "scheme": "GB-VAT",
            "id": "GB107328000",
            "legalName": "IBM UK LIMITED"
        }
    ],
    "name": "IBM",
    "address": {
        "streetAddress": "76, 78 Upper Ground",
        "locality": "London",
        "region": "London",
        "postalCode": "SE1 9PZ",
        "countryName": "United Kingdom"
    },
    "contactPoint": {
        "name": "Contracts Team",
        "email": "ibm_crc@uk.ibm.com",
        "telephone": "+44 (0) 370 909 9997"
    },
    "roles": [
        "supplier"
    ],
    "id": "GB-COH-04336774"
}

The publisher also collects an extra identifier, which is disclosed in the additionalIdentifiers block. The extra identifier is the VAT identification number for suppliers. Note that the VAT registry is not present in org-id.guide, but the publisher followed the instructions in the org-id meta-data guide to build the "GB-VAT" code used in the scheme field: the two-letter country prefix ("GB") plus a short abbreviation for the registry ("VAT"). The publisher checked that it does not conflict with any list code in org-id.guide.