Standard
========

The Open Contracting Data Standard includes a **technical specification** made up of:

-  An extended JSON Schema that defines objects and fields for describing a contracting process
-  A set of codelists that define standard values for several fields
-  A set of rules for constructing identifiers for contracting processes and organizations
-  A set of rules for merging individual 'releases' into a consolidated 'record' of a contracting process
-  A set of rules for transforming between JSON and tabular serializations
-  An extension mechanism for describing additional fields

This section describes the processes for maintaining these assets. See the `Normative and non-normative policy <https://standard.open-contracting.org/staging/1.2-dev/en/governance/normative/>`__ for details on which sections of the documentation are normative or not.

Documentation is written in Markdown syntax with `recommonmark <https://recommonmark.readthedocs.org/en/latest/>`__ building on `Commonmark <https://commonmark.org/>`__.

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :glob:

   schema
   contributing
   translation/index
   technical/index

History
~~~~~~~

For the history of standard development, read:

-  `2018 OCDS objectives and design decisions <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j6Ec1vV0DklKMYvIBpeoIjABXDRT0nFythGNJR2ms24/edit>`__
-  `2018 Extension mechanism design decisions <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zV0_UeVTGEdLRq5DQEH3XAUWl0HrHNNQPEwftLkHqBQ/edit>`__
-  `2018 Extension registry design decisions <https://docs.google.com/document/d/18JLz_RqBkYiDE-HSlzoa9_2XxgxYUmV9O2VnbMfc_Ss/edit>`__
-  `2018 Extension classifications and rationales <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zvR1PDefO6yTK28uKA6XCnxMLiC9oiEeb3uFjHuRyqI/edit>`__
-  `2018 Short history of standard development <https://docs.google.com/document/d/118NBDV6YIxlk75vc_8nmV0_GmacsQjes7xBXzoNSiY0/edit>`__
-  The `Development <https://os4d.opendataservices.coop/development/>`__ section of ODS' Standards Lab
-  `2014 technical scoping <https://github.com/open-contracting-archive/technical-approach/blob/main/README.md>`__

The `standard <https://github.com/open-contracting/standard/issues>`__ and `ocds-extensions <https://github.com/open-contracting/ocds-extensions/issues>`__ repositories contain all public discussions about standard development.