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Vendor Concentration
Vendor concentration is the share of public spend captured by a small number of suppliers. Alberta publishes enough vendor disclosure to show cross-ministry concentration, but not enough to compute standing-offer over-utilisation.
- What this page shows now
- Vendor share of provincial spend across ministries and years, vendor turnover screens, and concentration patterns drawn from the live vendor_spending_summary rollup.
- What is missing to prove more
- A central standing-offer / framework-agreement registry (not published in any structured form by either Alberta or the federal government), and bulk Alberta Corporate Registry data for corroborating incorporation history against vendor activity.
- Why it matters
- Concentration is one of the clearest signals that procurement competition has narrowed; the standing-offer gap means the most concentration-prone slice of spending is also the least visible.
I
Federal vs Alberta · data availability
7 dataset classes that bear on this chapter, federal vs Alberta side-by-side
7 dataset classes · Federal vs Alberta
Federal
- Bulk machine-readable
- 1
- Available · no bulk export
- 0
- Gated · account required
- 1
- Partial coverage
- 3
- Not published
- 2
Alberta
- Bulk machine-readable
- 3
- Available · no bulk export
- 1
- Gated · account required
- 1
- Partial coverage
- 0
- Not published
- 2
Contract awards (proactive disclosure)
- Format
- Consolidated CSV (Proactive Contracts ≥$10k)
- Lag
- Quarterly
- License
- Open Government Licence — Canada
- Linkable ID
- Vendor name is free-text; no stable vendor key
FederalBulk- Format
- CSV via Alberta Open Data (`contracts`, `vendor_spending_summary`)
- Lag
- Annual snapshot, monthly delta on disclosure file
- License
- Open Government Licence — Alberta
- Linkable ID
- Vendor name is free-text upstream; resolved to a stable id after entity resolution (spec 043)
AlbertaBulkCross-ministry / cross-department vendor spending rollup
- Format
- PSPC publishes top-vendor lists per department; no longitudinal cross-department concentration view
- Lag
- Annual
- License
- Open Government Licence — Canada
- Linkable ID
- Department-by-department only; no stable cross-department vendor key
FederalPartial- Format
- `vendor_spending_summary` (cross-ministry, multi-year) + `vendor_department_summary` (per-ministry breakdown)
- Lag
- Annual snapshot
- License
- Open Government Licence — Alberta
- Linkable ID
- vendor_id stable across years and ministries (after entity resolution (spec 043))
AlbertaBulkVendor stable identity across disclosures
- Format
- —
- Lag
- —
- License
- —
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- Vendor names are free-text in Proactive Contracts and CanadaBuys; no published stable vendor id. Researchers rebuild the entity layer per query.
Federal—- Format
- Spec 043 entity-resolution publishes a stable vendor_id keyed off the contracts fact table
- Lag
- Refreshed with each ingest cycle
- License
- Open Government Licence — Alberta (derivative)
- Linkable ID
- vendor_id
AlbertaBulkStanding-offer / call-up registry
- Format
- NSC reason flags on Proactive Contracts rows; standing-offer call-ups inconsistently flagged across departments
- Lag
- Quarterly (inherits Proactive Contracts cadence)
- License
- Open Government Licence — Canada
- Linkable ID
- No stable standing-offer agreement key; flagging is per-department
FederalPartial- Format
- —
- Lag
- —
- License
- —
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- AB does not publish a standing-offer / framework-agreement registry. Consumption against a master agreement is not visible.
Alberta—Corporate registry bulk (vendor identity / officer disclosure)
- Format
- Corporations Canada API / search; officer-history bulk export not public
- Lag
- Live search, no longitudinal bulk
- License
- Open Government Licence — Canada (search results)
- Linkable ID
- Corporation number; officer-history not bulk-queryable
FederalPartial- Format
- Per-record search via Alberta Corporate Registry only
- Lag
- —
- License
- Fee-per-record
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- No bulk-data feed and no public corporate-officer index. Vendor identity churn (renames, ownership changes, shell-company patterns) cannot be detected from open data.
AlbertaNo bulkBid histories (losing bidders, amounts)
- Format
- ATIP-only — no public dataset
- Lag
- —
- License
- —
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- Losing-bid amounts not published in any structured form.
FederalGated- Format
- Alberta Purchasing Connection — vendor account required (not open-data; portal access only)
- Lag
- Live (account)
- License
- Terms of use, no open licence
- Linkable ID
- —
AlbertaGatedCross-government vendor-concentration index (longitudinal)
- Format
- —
- Lag
- —
- License
- —
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- No federal publication aggregates vendor share across all departments year-over-year. PSPC publishes top-vendor-per-department snapshots only.
Federal—- Format
- —
- Lag
- —
- License
- —
- Linkable ID
- —
- Note
- No standalone published index; vendor_spending_summary supports the analysis but is not itself an indicator dataset.
Alberta—
Legend bulk machine-readable available · no bulk export gated · account required partial coverage not published· click any row for license, lag, ID, source
II
What the live data shows today
1 finding · Page 1 of 1
III
What open data still can’t answer
4 questions this chapter raises that the public record doesn’t close — index format, no page reference because no page exists
- 01
Standing-offer / call-up consumption registry
The most-flagged abuse vector in jurisdictions that can measure it (federal AG audits have flagged standing-offer over-utilisation repeatedly). Neither jurisdiction publishes consumption-against-master-agreement data in structured form, so the over-utilisation signal cannot be computed from open data on either side.
- 02
Corporate-registry bulk (officer history, incorporation dates)
The vendor-turnover headline screen is runnable, but the corroboration step — incorporation date < 2y, shared directors with prior incumbents — needs corporate-registry bulk data. Neither jurisdiction publishes officer-history bulk feeds, so shell-company and rebrand patterns cannot be detected from open data.
- 03
Cross-government vendor-concentration index (longitudinal)
No published index aggregates a single vendor's share across all departments / ministries year-over-year. Researchers rebuild this view per query from raw contract rows on both sides.
- 04
Bid-history losing-bid amounts
Without losing-bid amounts there is no benchmark for whether a winning vendor's price reflects market competition or insider pricing. Federal access is ATIP-only; Alberta publishes solicitation pages but not losing-bid amounts.