1. Source hierarchy
Official public-procurement sources remain authoritative. ContractLens currently gives technical priority to UK Find a Tender data and EU Tenders Electronic Daily. A record is not treated as approved for automated or commercial use merely because it is visible in a browser.
| Evidence layer | Meaning | Publication rule |
|---|---|---|
| Source fact | Directly stated in an identified official record. | Preserve the source pointer and retrieval time. |
| Derived fact | A deterministic transformation, such as notice linking or currency normalisation. | Describe the transformation and retain the source value. |
| Analyst inference | A documented human judgement. | Must not overwrite or masquerade as a source fact. |
| Model inference | An automated interpretation requiring confidence and review. | Publish only with provenance, limitations and a review state. |
| Unknown | The evidence is missing or insufficient. | Never convert into a favourable assumption. |
2. Qualification model
The central research question is whether important conditions can be surfaced before a smaller supplier spends significant time preparing a response. The initial condition set includes certifications, insurance, turnover, relevant experience, geography, framework status, security clearance and explicit exclusions.
Fail-closed decision states
- Pursue: the sourced evidence supports a positive fit and no known hard blocker remains.
- Review: wording is ambiguous, supplier evidence is incomplete or a material condition needs human interpretation.
- Reject: a sourced mandatory condition is not met.
- Insufficient evidence: the available record cannot support a responsible conclusion.
Ambiguous wording must produce review—not a positive declaration. Missing supplier evidence is never treated as proof of eligibility.
3. Amendment memory
Procurement notices change. ContractLens treats a material amendment to a deadline, value, scope, lot structure or mandatory requirement as a new decision event. An earlier qualification conclusion remains historical evidence, but it is no longer current until reviewed against the amendment.
Every material change should preserve the before value, after value, source notice, publication time and reason requalification was required.
4. Proposed evaluation gates
The figures below are validation targets. They are not achieved or reported ContractLens performance. A polished demonstration does not compensate for weak recall on disqualifying requirements.
| Metric | Proposed research gate | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Notice deduplication F1 | ≥ 0.98 | Duplicate alerts destroy trust and distort amendment histories. |
| Amendment detection recall | ≥ 0.97 | Missed changes can make an earlier conclusion unsafe. |
| Eligibility extraction precision | ≥ 0.90 | Requirements must not be invented from descriptive prose. |
| Eligibility extraction recall | ≥ 0.85 | Material conditions cannot be routinely omitted. |
| Hard-disqualifier recall | ≥ 0.95 | False reassurance is more dangerous than cautious review. |
| Fit-ranking Precision@5 | ≥ 0.70 | The shortlist must save attention rather than add noise. |
| Material provenance completeness | 100% | A decision claim without a source pointer is invalid. |
5. Publication boundaries
- Official sources must be identified and linked where permitted.
- Natural-person contact details are suppressed unless strictly necessary and lawfully justified.
- Third-party attachments do not automatically inherit the reuse rights of notice metadata.
- ContractLens must not imply government affiliation, endorsement, completeness or authoritative eligibility decisions.
- Corrections and source updates take precedence over preserving a neat historical narrative.
- Irish eTenders automation remains outside scope until an official access and reuse basis is documented.
- Fictional opportunities, buyers, values and deadlines are prohibited on public pages.
6. Independent research
ContractLens is not affiliated with the UK Government, the European Union, Irish public bodies or procurement portal operators. Official records remain the source of truth. ContractLens is examining whether an independent evidence layer can help suppliers decide where to look more closely.