Why people look at this
A contract that doubles after it is signed spends money that was never competed for at that size.
How it is worked out
- Federal contracts over $10,000: final contract value compared with the original value the department reported.
- Flagged when the final value is at least twice the original and the increase is at least $25,000.
- Uses the latest version of each contract, so amendments are counted once.
Data used
What it cannot tell you
Planned option years are sometimes reported as amendments. The provincial reports do not publish change orders at all, so this flag covers federal contracts only.
The Open Contracting Partnership's guide to red flags puts it this way: a red flag is not evidence that anything wrong happened. It points at something that may be worth a closer look.
This page and the calculation are generated from one definition, so they cannot drift apart. See the results.