English overview
Estonian IT public procurement, in public
avahanked.ee is an independent public data view of Estonian public procurement in information technology: who wins, who buys, how much and when. It is built by Devaster and is not affiliated with any buyer, supplier or state body. The site itself is in Estonian — this single page explains what the data is, what it is not, and how to read the Estonian pages.
Figures on this page are computed from the dataset at build time. Most recent award date in the corpus: (ISO 8601). The pipeline runs several times on working days; the register itself publishes some notices with a delay.
The one caveat that matters: a framework value is a ceiling #
| Measure | Value | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Single contracts (üksiklepingud) | 570 655 260 € | Actual contractual commitments. This is the closest thing here to spending. |
| Framework ceilings (raamlepingud) | 1 049 846 042 € | Upper limits, not money moved. 65% of the headline total. |
| Both combined | 1 620 501 302 € | Reported only for completeness. Presenting it as public spending would be wrong. |
Actual draw-down under a framework is visible only where the register records call-offs, so real framework usage is systematically under-observed rather than over-observed. Where a winning-notice value is implausibly low (buyers sometimes enter an hourly rate), the amount is taken from the original contract notice estimate and tagged hinn. (hinnanguline, estimated).
Scope: what is in and what is out #
Included: awards whose CPV classification falls in the CPV 72 tree — IT services, including software development, consultancy, systems integration, maintenance and support — reported in the Estonian Public Procurement Register for 2021–2026.
Excluded, and this matters when comparing totals against any national "state IT spending" figure: standalone software licences (CPV 48), computer hardware (CPV 30) and telecommunications equipment (CPV 32). Also excluded is everything procured below the thresholds that trigger a register entry, along with in-house work by state IT houses, which never appears as a procurement at all.
Bidder coverage is partial before mid-2023. Losing bidders became routinely public only with the eForms notice schema, adopted in Estonia in the middle of 2023. Earlier years are backfilled from the register's tender endpoint where possible, but any statement about the number of bidders, single-bid rates or win rates in 2021–2023 rests on incomplete disclosure. Competition metrics on the site count only procurements whose bidder list was actually published.
Company identities are consolidated by registry code, so a renamed company keeps one history. Where several suppliers won jointly, the value is split equally between them in supplier rankings so the same money is not counted twice. 375 awards involve at least one supplier whose registered country is outside Estonia; country codes are self-reported and inconsistently formatted in the source data (both two- and three-letter forms occur), so treat that count as indicative.
Data sources #
| Source | What it provides | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Riigihangete register Estonian Public Procurement Register | Contract awards, contract notices, bidder lists, contract modifications. | CC BY 4.0 |
| Äriregister avaandmed Business Register open data | Company names, registry codes, board members, headcount from annual reports (with Tax and Customs Board quarterly figures as a fallback). | CC BY 4.0 |
| RTK saldoandmikud State Shared Service Centre ledgers | Total payments from the public sector to a supplier — all sectors, not only IT, so these figures are wider than this site's procurement scope. | Public open data |
Open data and machine access #
- avahanked-it-awards.csv — the full normalised award dataset, RFC 4180, UTF-8.
- avahanked-it-awards.json — the same records as JSON, with metadata.
- dataset README — column definitions and caveats, with an English section.
- RSS feed — new tenders and newly announced winners.
- llms.txt — a condensed overview for AI assistants.
Citation and accuracy #
The underlying data is CC BY 4.0. A suitable citation is: "Source: Riigihangete register / Estonian Ministry of Finance, CC BY 4.0, collected via avahanked.ee".
The editorial stance is signals, not accusations: a single bidder, an unusually large framework or a long-standing incumbent are reasons to ask a question, not evidence of wrongdoing. Pages that surface such patterns say so explicitly.
Navigating the Estonian site #
Eleven words cover most of the interface. Machine translation handles the rest of the page text reasonably well; these are the terms it tends to mangle.
| Estonian | English | Where |
|---|---|---|
| hange | procurement — the whole process, from notice to award | /riigihanked |
| hankija | contracting authority, the public-sector buyer | /hankijad |
| tarnija | supplier, the company that won | /tarnijad |
| raamleping | framework agreement — the value is a ceiling, not spend | /raamlepingud |
| üksikleping | single contract — an actual commitment | shown alongside frameworks throughout |
| teadaanne | notice; open tenders not yet awarded | /teadaanded |
| leping | contract — one award, with its parties, value and CPV codes | /leping/reference, linked from every supplier and buyer page |
| kategooriad | categories — the CPV classification of what was bought | /kategooriad |
| ohumärgid | red flags — single-bid awards, thin competition, unused frameworks | /ohumargid |
| vaidlustus | dispute — a challenge heard by VAKO, the procurement review committee | shown on the procurements it concerns |
| aasta | year — everything awarded in one calendar year | /aasta/2026 |
Two more you will meet in tables: maksumus (value), pakkuja (bidder). Search across everything is at /otsi; the full Estonian methodology page is /saidist.
Contact #
Questions, corrections, data requests and tips: [email protected]. avahanked.ee does not broker procurement, advise bidders or sell services — for tendering and appeals, go to the Riigihangete register directly.