Before relying on a tender feed, a commercial team needs to know which buyers, notice stages and documents it can see. “Country covered” does not answer whether a relevant local authority, framework call-off or recent amendment is included.
Use this source audit to produce a coverage register and a repeatable check against official publications.
Separate the publication layer from the reuse layer
| Layer | Useful for | Check before relying on it |
|---|---|---|
| Official notice portal | Published notice and its identifiers | Scope of publication, version history, linked submission site |
| Buyer or submission portal | Documents, clarifications and submission | Registration, access restrictions, amendments |
| Official open-data publication | Bulk analysis and repeatable queries | Update frequency, licence, schema and historical completeness |
| Aggregator or intelligence service | Searching across sources and organising work | Named sources, collection dates, missing fields and original links |
The same procedure may appear in several places. Count distinct procedures or lots for pipeline purposes, while retaining every relevant publication in the history. The Open Contracting Data Standard release reference separates tender, award, contract and implementation information; those stages should not be treated as interchangeable rows.
Build a coverage register that can be tested
For each market segment, record the buyer population, official source, notice stages expected, observed publication dates, historical range checked, document access and classification scheme. Add the date and person who performed the check.
Use three states: verified for this sample, missing, and not yet tested. If you have checked a few federal notices, do not describe an entire country's procurement as complete. If a request fails or a portal requires login, record that limitation rather than zero opportunities.
For EU searches, start with TED and the country playbooks for relevant national routes. Publication obligations and thresholds vary by regime; TED is not a universal inventory of every public purchase. Read the scope and publication provisions in the EU public-sector procurement Directive alongside the rules for the actual buyer and contract.
Run a small reconciliation
Select known relevant official notices across your buyer types and time periods. For each, check whether your feed contains the right notice ID, current status, lot, deadline and document link. Include an amendment and a historical award, not only new competitions.
Illustrative result: eight of ten sampled competitions are present, but a deadline amendment is stale and two local buyers are absent. Report those exact observations. “80% of the market covered” would be unsupported because the sample was not a census or representative survey.
Repeat after a source change. Keep the official URLs so another reviewer can reproduce the check.
Inspect the fields that change decisions
Missing value is unknown, not zero. Buyer address is not necessarily delivery location. Publication date is not contract start date. A framework maximum is not actual spend. A source-native classification should retain its scheme and label, even if a service also suggests another classification.
Documents need their own check. A working notice URL does not prove that the specification, pricing schedule and latest clarification are accessible. A summary should preserve uncertainty rather than invent absent eligibility or award terms.
Use the findings
Keep verified sources in the daily monitoring workflow. Assign a manual check for a material gap until it is resolved. Use the same limitations when presenting market metrics.
When assessing Duke or another provider, bring the reconciliation sample to a product discussion. Ask for source links and record-level results for your market. Do not infer current coverage from a marketing country list.
Reviewed 13 September 2026. The register and reconciliation are editorial audit methods; no platform-wide coverage result is asserted.