Legacy Government Purchase Orders with Vendor Details

Legacy purchase orders from the City-Parish government of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, detailing procurement of goods and services. The dataset includes both header records for overall orders and detail records for individual line items, as tracked in the old system prior to September 15, 2017. Data is provided by the data.brla.gov organization.

Use Cases

• Analyze spending by DEPARTMENT_NAME and PO CATEGORY CODE to identify major procurement categories.
• Assess vendor diversity by linking VENDOR MINORITY CODE and VENDOR MINORITY DESCRIPTION to TOTAL AMOUNT spent.
• Track procurement timelines using INPUT DATE and PURCHASE ORDER NUMBER to study order processing.
• Examine item-level costs by correlating ITEM QUANTITY ORDERED, ITEM UNIT OF MEASURE, and ITEM TOTAL COST.
• Profile vendor relationships using VENDOR NAME 1, VENDOR STATE, and VOUCHED AMOUNT to map supplier geography.

Strengths

• Contains both header and detail item records linked by PURCHASE ORDER NUMBER, providing a complete view of each transaction.
• Includes over 25 columns covering financial amounts, vendor information, department data, and item specifics.

Limitations

• Data is temporally stale, covering only records processed before September 15, 2017, with no updates.
• Unknown row count and sample size limit assessment of statistical representativeness.
• Potential for data duplication as header information is repeated on all associated detail item records.

Provenance

Source

City-Parish government of Baton Rouge, Louisiana (data.brla.gov).

Collection Method

Extracted from the legacy government purchasing system.

Time Range

Records up to September 14, 2017.

Freshness

null

Geography

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States.