D-0004 · The federal contract register publishes every amendment as a contract
8 September 2026 · Government of Canada, proactive disclosure of contracts
Obligation. The Government of Canada publishes every contract over 10,000 dollars as open data, for the public to use. Nothing in the documentation says amendment rows must be excluded from a sum, and no field carries the amount an amendment adds.
Conduct. Each amendment is published as a separate row carrying the whole value of the contract after the amendment. Summing the 1,313,540 published rows gives 1,232,280,189,662 dollars. Collapsed to one row per contract, the register holds 609,083,183,336 dollars. The sum of the rows overstates the real total by 102%.
Why it scores where it does. Reach 3, national, and every person who uses the dataset. Harm 1, money and time, with no personal injury. Absence of a remedy 3, because no route exists for a member of the public to compel a publisher to correct an open dataset. Persistence 2, because the defect is built into how the register is produced. Total 9, High, 400 dollars.
Evidence and method. Full workings, including the second defect underneath it, are published in the finding.