The reasoning looks sound. A ministry buys the same software as you, in volume, and administrative documents are subject to disclosure. Ask, compare, negotiate.
A documented case shows where that reasoning stops.
What the disclosure produced
The software framework contract of a ministry, awarded through the State’s central purchasing body and signed in February 2021, was made available for disclosure. The document handed over had the prices redacted and the expiry date redacted. It mentioned a floor threshold of 250 licences and sat within a contractual relationship of roughly fifteen years.
What remains readable: the contract’s existence, its object, its form, its age. What is erased: everything you would need to build a price reference.
The source of this finding is an association campaigning on free software, which has pursued this case for years. Its position is activist, its documents are public, and it is cited here on both counts.
What it costs you to ignore this
A request for access to administrative documents is prepared, sent, followed up, and concluded several months later. If your negotiation depends on its outcome, you have tied a commercial timeline to an administrative procedure whose result is, at best, a useful document and, in the case documented here, a document with no price.
The cost is not the price of the request. It is the negotiation time lost.
What you do instead
You look for structure, not price. The shape of the framework contract, the duration, the volume thresholds, the presence or absence of an exit clause: these elements survive redaction and tell you what the vendor is willing to concede to a major client.
You also look for precedent, not tariff. Knowing that a public buyer obtained a given clause lets you ask for it. The fact that it exists somewhere is enough, without its price.
The general rule this case illustrates
The bigger the contract, the less transparent it is. Public procurement transparency is real on small, standardised contracts, and it collapses exactly where the amounts get interesting.
The sentence to remember
On large contracts, public data documents the form. The price stays private.
Sources
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UGAP, new keeper of the Ministry of Defence's Microsoft open bar · April, 1 January 2021
Licence: CC BY-SA · Convention signée en février 2021, seuil plancher de 250 licences, environ quinze ans d'historique de relation contractuelle, prix et date d'expiration caviardés dans le document communiqué. Association engagée sur le sujet du logiciel libre, position militante à signaler au lecteur. Date de publication à confirmer.