How our editorial team works
BeachStake tracks tenders for state-property concessions (concessioni demaniali) on Italy's coast and lakes. This page explains where our data comes from, who checks it, what each tender status means, what we leave out and how to report an error. We also say what we cannot do.
Our editorial team
Our editorial team reads the sources, approves each tender before it appears on the site and writes the guides. It signs its work as “the editorial team”, without individual names.
The editorial team does not give advice. Advice on a specific tender is a separate service, under its own engagement: see Consulting.
Our sources
Every night an automated system reads:
- the official notice boards (albo pretorio, where each municipality posts its acts) and websites of the 874 municipalities we follow, 674 coastal and 200 lakeside;
- the e-procurement platforms used by public bodies;
- the public notice platform of ANAC (Italy's anti-corruption authority), the Italian Official Gazette (5th special series), TED (Tenders Electronic Daily, the EU's public procurement journal) and regional tender portals.
The source of a tender is the public body that publishes it. Trade press, aggregators and competing services may alert us that a tender exists, but we take the documents from the public body, and where its act is not yet available we say so (see “The source we cite”).
Limitations. Reading every night does not mean reading everything. Some notice boards do not respond or block our automated checks: 42 of the 874 in our source register. We know, we log it and we fix it one source at a time. Some tenders are also published on portals we do not yet read.
From source to page: checked by a person
- Reading. Each new act is captured with its dates: the date of the act and the period during which it is posted on the notice board.
- Filtering. A first automated filter separates acts that concern a tender from those that do not (fees, administrative decisions, plans) and from those outside our scope.
- Draft. A new tender starts as a draft, and a draft is not visible outside the editorial team.
- Check. A member of the editorial team checks the tender against the available sources and decides whether to publish it. Only then does it appear on the site and in our counts.
- The brief. For some tenders we write a full brief: eligibility requirements, award criteria and weightings, deadline, concession fee, duration, compensation, documents. The system drafts it from the acts; a person rereads and approves it. Every figure states where it comes from: an act, our own calculation or a third party. A figure without a source is not published.At present, 30 of 153 tenders have a full brief.
- Personal data. A document containing third parties' personal data is not released until it has been checked.
Limitations. Checking takes time, and we do it before publishing, not after. A tender may therefore already be on a notice board without appearing here yet.
What a tender's status means
| Status | What it means | What it does not mean |
|---|---|---|
| Open | the notice has been published and the deadline for bids has not yet passed | it does not tell you how many days remain: the deadline is in the brief |
| In preparation | the municipality has begun the process (policy resolution, beach management plan, award criteria) but has not yet published the notice | it is not a forecast: it does not say when the notice will be published, and some processes have been stalled for years |
| Closed | the deadline for bids has passed | it does not say how the tender ended: for the outcome, the municipality's own acts are authoritative |
| No tender on record | we have not checked any tender in the sources we read for that municipality | it does not mean that none exists |
Statuses that depend on the calendar (for example, from open to closed once the deadline passes) are updated overnight, based on the dates in the acts.
The deadline is the date by which bids must be submitted. When the act does not state it, we say so: a tender without a stated deadline has not “expired”; it is a tender whose deadline we do not know.
What we leave out
- Ports and port areas, berths, buoys and mooring fields.
- State-owned buildings awaiting redevelopment, and green areas.
- River concessions: we cover the sea and lakes.
- Tenders our editorial team has not yet checked.
A tender outside our scope is not a reading error: it is simply not something we cover.
The source we cite
As a rule, the source of a tender is the public body's act, and the brief links to the page of the body or public platform that publishes it. A newspaper article is never presented as if it were the act: we only link to public bodies and public platforms.
At present, 24 of 153 tenders do not yet have a link to an act of the public body (for some, we learned of the tender from a news report): in those cases the brief shows no link to the acts.
Before taking part in a tender, always check the notice, its annexes, any corrections and the deadline with the public body.
How to report an error
If you find an incorrect figure, telling us is the quickest way to get it fixed. Use the Report an error in the data form, or the “Report an error in this brief” link on each tender brief. Tell us the page, the figure and, if you can, the source for the correction. You do not need to buy anything. We check every report against the sources; if we need confirmation from the public body, we will let you know.
The Observatory
The Observatory publishes aggregate figures on the tenders on record: how many are open, in preparation and closed, region by region. The figures use the same filter as the rest of the site (checked tenders only, ports excluded), and each edition carries its date and is not revised after publication. They rise when our editorial team checks a new tender, not when a notice is published: they measure the tenders we know of, not every tender that exists. Town-by-town detail is part of the Pro plan.
Our guides
Each guide (for example the Bolkestein guide and the one on the model tender notice) shows the date of its last update and is for general information only: it does not replace the tender notice or professional advice.