Government Accountability For Outsourced Services*

The effect of outsourcing on government accountability for public services continues to be contested. Analysts point to an accountability deficit while governments insist that accountability is retained (and indeed improved). The existence of an accountability deficit is confirmed, using examples from the Commonwealth Job Network. The government claim, that accountability remains, is best interpreted as rhetorical, as a refusal to shift blame to private contractors, even though some channels of accountability may be weakened. The claim can be seen as evidence of an increasing incorporation of private contractors into the overall structure of government.     

Analyzing the Contracting-Out of Government Services: Relevant Cost-Benefit Considerations

This article reviews various approaches to analyzing the contracting-out decision and distills a set of cost/benefit considerations which each analysis must address in order to properly ascertain whether there is any advantage to contracting out as compared to performing the work in-house. The author describes an approach to analyzing the contracting-out decision that begins with an unambiguous, comprehensive statement of service goals to facilitate the measurement of outcomes and is followed by an examination of the other considerations on the cost side of the equation which are basic to the proper measurement of all direct costs, indirect costs, and social costs.     

OECD Symposium on the Future of Public Services

The OECD Ministerial Symposium on the Future of Public Services took place in Paris, 1–6 March 1996. Professional Developments reproduces below the Statement by the Chair at the conclusion of the Symposium. The OECD comprises 26 member countries, including the Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It also now includes Mexico and the Czech Republic.     

Breaking the Constitutional Silence: the Public Services Industry and Government

Analysis of constitutional arrangements has been too narrow in the past, confined to examination of explicitly governmental arrangements. But corporate enterprises perform such important public functions, especially in the age of outsourcing, that they need to be incorporated into the constitution. The article develops this argument and proposes a framework for such incorporation.     

Local Government Procurement of CPA Audit Services: The Role of the States

Recent studies have raised serious concerns about the quality of governmental audits by independent CPAs. Part of the problem is that many governmental units do not use effective audit procurement procedures. This article examines current state guidelines for the procurement of CPA audit services by local governments and recommends an expansion of the states' role in this area.     

Efficiency Measurement in Spanish Local Government: The Case of Municipal Water Services

In this work, we established a procedure for evaluation of the efficiency of the water supply. This procedure has allowed us to find that the proposed indicators have a discriminating capability in the analysis of the service, and to reject criticisms traditionally assigned to the sensitivity of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique in relation to degrees of freedom. The results obtained show that the population density, as a factor that defines one of the particular characteristics of the surroundings of each municipality, has a statistically significant impact on the indexes of efficiency, this affirmation not being extended to the public or private ownership of the service. The scale inefficiency is higher than the technical inefficiency. These typologies of efficiency are, principally, motivated by the supply side of the service, which is specially linked with the necessary infrastructure. The demand of the citizens is satisfied with a behavior close to optimal.     

Joining-Up Government in the UK: Towards Public Services for an Information Age

The reform of public services has preoccupied managers for several decades. Nevertheless, it is my contention that the present reform agenda has some plausible claims to be different from much that went before. The vision that has come to the fore in the Australian federal government's Clients First Program (Information Technology Review Group 1995), in the Clinton/Gore administration's Access America report (Government IT Services 1997) andthe recent British White Paper, Modernising Government (Cabinet Office 1999) not only promotes the 'client orientation' in public administration, but also reflects a belief in the crucial contribution to be made by information and communication technologies (ICTs). This is a vision for an information age (POST 1998). It is being driven by the conviction that public management has too often been modelled on business 'as it was in the age of US Steel, not the age of Microsoft, Apple, Wal-Mart and Federal Express' (Gore 1993:xiii).     

Shared Services in Australian Local Government: Rationale, Alternative Models and Empirical Evidence

Widespread enthusiasm amongst Australian policy elites for structural reform in local government has evaporated as disappointing outcomes of council amalgamation programs became evident. As a consequence, emphasis has now shifted towards shared serviced models as a means of enhancing service provision and reducing costs. However, a disturbing feature of the current debate on shared services has been the absence of a well-articulated economic and political rationale for this form of service delivery, a lack of analysis of alternative models of shared service provision and a neglect of available empirical evidence. This article seeks to remedy these deficiencies by considering the analytical foundations of shared local services, conducting a review of alternative models as vehicles for shared services and evaluating available empirical evidence.     

Coproduction of Government Services and the New Information Technology: Investigating the Distributional Biases

This article investigates how communications advances affect citizens’ ability to participate in coproduction of government services. The authors analyze service requests made to the City of Boston during a one‐year period from 2010 to 2011 and, using geospatial analysis and negative binomial regression, investigate possible disparities by race, education, and income in making service requests. The findings reveal little concern that 311 systems (nonemergency call centers) may benefit one racial group over another; however, there is some indication that Hispanics may use these systems less as requests move from call centers to the Internet and smartphones. Consistent with prior research, the findings show that poorer neighborhoods are less likely to take advantage of 311 service, with the notable exception of smartphone utilization. The implications for citizen participation in coproduction and bridging the digital divide are discussed.     

完善基层政府公共服务供给体系

基层政府是＂小政府,大社会＂,＂小政府,大服务＂,＂小政府,大保障＂。我国基层政府公共服务供给体系直接影响着社会公共利益的实现、人民生活水平的提高、基层政府的形象和国际声誉。我国部分基层政府公共服务供给体系还较薄弱,主要表现在：公共服务意识淡薄化、公共服务主体单一化、公共服务职能抽象化、公共服务形式逐利化、公共服务结构失衡化、公共服务过程形式化、公共服务导向扭曲化、公共服务重心偏离化、公共服务结果低效化。因此,我们必须以科学发展观为指导,进一步完善基层政府公共服务供给体系,包括：树立公共服务理念;强化公共服务职能;创新公共服务体制;加大公共服务投入;完善公共服务政策;提升公共服务质量。     

对居家养老服务政府购买模式的比较研究

居家养老作为一种新型的养老方式,因为服务的便利性和人性化已逐渐纳入到老年群体的需求范围中,全面推进居家养老服务,是破解我国日趋尖锐的养老服务难题.鉴于我国已经进入了老龄化社会阶段,面对公民对居家养老服务的庞大需求,政府通过购买服务的方式来解决这一现实问题.针对政府与社会组织在居家养老服务购买方面的合作现状,本研究在行动者网络理论的指导下,采用多案例比较的方式,从政府购买模式以及行动者网络视角下的内在运作机制两个维度建立分析框架,对不同的政府采购模式进行比较,分析其在运行环节中的优势劣势,以不断促进和改善采购过程中政府与社会组织的合作机制,有助于政府根据实际情境和制度安排选择购买模式,最终提高服务供给的效率和质量.     

Efficiency Measurement in Australian Local Government: The Case of New South Wales Municipal Water Services

Australian local government has experienced a series of reforms directed at increasing economic efficiency. An important element in the reform program has been the development of a number of partial indicators of local government service delivery in the states and territories. This paper attempts to augment this literature on performance measurement in Australian local government by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with holistic indices of allocative and technical efficiency in New South Wales (NSW) municipal water services. It also seeks to incorporate qualitative indicators into efficiency measures. “Best-practice” councils are identified and the underlying causes of municipal water service efficiency are analyzed.     

The Changing Role of Government in Community Services: Issues of Access and Equity to Administrative Review

Governments are increasingly moving to privatise, or contract out many community services and functions previously the responsibility of the public sector. Consumers of community services stand to benefit from this trend toward contracting out. However, it is also apparent that there is a need to ensure that improved avenues of review, redress and safeguards accompany these changes in delivery and decision making.     

北京市政府购买公共服务的实践探索与问题研究

随着我国社会公共需求全面增长以及需求日益多样化,如何创新公共服务供给模式、提高公共服务质量是当下我国地方政府需要应对的巨大挑战。相比发达国家我国公共服务购买开始的较晚且发展缓慢,取得了一些实践成果,同时也出现了一系列突出问题。以北京市政府购买公共服务的实践探索为例,通过探析其在发展中存在的问题并提出完善对策,能够为地方政府推进公共服务购买提供经验借鉴,有助于推动我国社会组织以及公共服务购买市场的健康成长。     

德国、荷兰、西班牙政府公共服务情况的比较研究

德国、荷兰、西班牙三国在公共服务方面有其共同点,同时由于三国在价值观念、政治体制以及经济发展水平上存在差异,三国在公共服务制度和公共服务模式上也存在差异。但是,控制社会保障支出规模,降低公共服务成本,实行公共服务的社会化、市场化管理正成为三国公共服务改革的基本趋向。     

Easy Money: Tax Exporting and State Support for Higher Education

There is a substantial literature that assesses the effects of tax‐exporting capacities on the tax structures and aggregate spending levels that state governments choose to implement, but no work exists that isolates the effects of state tax exporting on higher education spending. Using state‐level data for 1989, 1995, 2002, and 2007, we estimate for the median voter in each state the change in the marginal cost of higher education subsidization generated by tax exportation, and calculate the increased higher education spending that results. We consider three types of spending: state appropriations to public universities as well as need‐ and non‐need‐based aid awarded to in‐state students. We find that neither type of aid is responsive to the marginal cost, or tax price, faced by the median voter. However, the median voter's price elasticity of demand for state appropriations is statistically significant and negative. We find that the median voter's tax price is substantially reduced by the presence of prominent mining and tourism industries and by the federal deductibility offset available to firms. Thus, these tax‐exporting capacities exert upward pressure on voter demand for state appropriations to public universities.     

Economic Reforms and Their Impacts on Informal Payments for Government Services in Transition Countries

This article examines whether economic reforms in transition countries reduce the incidence of informal payments to government officials. Using the 2009 EBRD-World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) data, empirical models of the likelihood and frequency that firms are asked to make informal payments are estimated. Eight measures of economic reform developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) are also included in the analysis, both individually and as a combined index of overall reform, to test whether reforms reduce informal payments. Firm, country, and economic reform factors are all found to have an impact. In particular, the overall reform index and all but one of the eight EBRD reform indices are found to significantly reduce informal payments. The marginal effect of a one-standard-deviation increase in the overall reform index is to reduce the probability of a firm reporting that it gives a gift by 2.5% and reduce the probability that the firm reports that gift giving is a usual practice in its industry by 4%. Enterprise reforms, markets and trade reforms, financial sector reforms, and infrastructure reforms all have the effect of reducing the likelihood and frequency of informal payments.