The year was 2015. Uptown Funk was a hit, online debate centered on whether a dress was blue-black or white-gold, and from a lone desk in snow-hit Washington D.C., the Open Contracting Partnership opened its doors.

From day one, our mission was simple but radical: to turn public procurement from a black box into an open book. We saw a unique opportunity to make government work better, converting taxpayer money fairly and effectively into schools, roads, hospitals, and vital services that we all need.

10 years on, the OCDS is used by nearly 80 governments, businesses and civil society. To our delight, the motivations for its adoption go well beyond digital transformation to using open contracting as a lever for wider social, economic and environmental reforms.

Public contracts are at the heart of government. The world’s largest marketplace, covering one in every three dollars of public spending, procurement offers a unique opportunity to make government work better and improve lives. It helps provide affordable health services, quality education, climate-resilient infrastructure and more.

By focusing on policy goals, coalitions of change and digital solutions, we have seen open contracting deliver results and improve lives in countries worldwide. We estimate more than US$120 billion in government spending has been impacted by our work, reaching 220 million people. That means every $1 invested in the Open Contracting Partnership has positively impacted five people.

While we live in challenging times, we aren’t planning on going anywhere. With our global team, we will double down on supporting our amazing partners worldwide in creating that change. And the global open contracting community is delivering: building innovative solutions to ensure climate-resilient flood infrastructure, empowering small businesses to participate in public procurement and powering Ukraine’s reconstruction.

So let’s take a moment for some inspiration and go beyond the technical specifications, RfPs, CPVs, and e-GPs.

We invite you to take a look back at the past decade and meet some of the people whose lives have been changed by better public procurement, Cathyline from Uganda, Laura and Grecia from Buenos Aires, and the children of Ruta, Ukraine.