Contracting Out Public Service Organization

Under the NPM umbrella, public sector has also been experiencing a shift to greater competition. The need to remove monopoly of service delivery and create contestability, through privatization, public tendering, and term contracts, justifies the adoption of competition principle (Dunleavy 1994; Hood 1991). Insisting to do bureaucratic provision on public services instead of contracting them out, knowing that private sector can deliver them better, it is believed would only force governments to lose comparative advantages on price, efficiency, and effectiveness (Dunleavy 1994. p.49). This way, governments are able to fulfil their responsibility in providing services and the financing, while simultaneously stimulate greater competition among providers under market dynamics. However, it is hard to instigate public service ethos in private parties. Therefore, the capacity of private entities to act consistently with the public interest is greatly questioned in this scenario. Are concerns such as public health and safety, environment sustainability, and social equity likely to be sacrificed underneath market mechanisms? When power is shared with organizations which have business objectives apart from government’s goals, the fundamental issue is how to detect which missions they are carrying out. Many public services being delivered by third parties are targeted for vulnerable sections of the community which can pose a higher risk of potential abuse, neglect, exploitation, and

Many public agencies in recent years have followed the trend of privatization, or contracting-out. Activities and functions that were once performed, or services that were once provided, by public employees are now being performed by private sector employees (Lyons). Vehicle towing, health services, police protection, and solid waste collection are among the many services and functions that government has contracted out. A survey in 1995 that was sent to mayors or city managers of America's largest cities (based on population) revealed that only three of the 66 cities that responded to the survey had not privatized any city services.

The increased of industrialization in American cities brought a new social demand to public officials who were unprepared to target the existing issues of society. Administrative officers started to gaining power to conduct intervention programs or institutions. However, people started to distrust public administrators and institutions for their inefficiency and incapacity they gave to the treatment of social issues. The author

The Next Government of the United States: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them by Donald Kettl discuss and analyze the current government, its twentieth-century solutions and increasing overmatched by twenty-first century problems. The book demonstrates how the process of governance has fallen out of sync with the problems that government is trying to solve. It covers domestic concerns such as waging a war, protecting our food supply and boarders, providing healthcare coverage for the population or relief after a devastating hurricane.

I would agree with you regarding why Weston City take utilizes an outsourcing system, and it does seem to working for their city. Not to mention, outsourcing has become the norm for many organizations, and the public-sector has become committed to outsourcing, which allows the private-sector to grow because the majority of the jobs are outsourced to the private sector. So the indication of contracting public services to private companies to cut cost makes sense. If someone is willing to fix streets or put out fires for less money, that should be a plus for a government’s bottom line. Many state and local governments have identified hundreds of millions of dollars in savings by hiring outside contractors or a neighboring city’s services to

The definition of ‘state’ is ambiguous. The meaning can change depending on the context. For instance, it could relate to agencies within the state such as government bodies, or the practices carried out by individuals. Furthermore, the state is part of everyday life and manifests itself through the combination of institutions, practices, people and discourses. This creates social order (Blakeley and Saward, 2009, p. 360).

Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.

The purpose of this article is to explore the huge problem of outsourcing or contracting out the administrative constitutional norms into private contractors. The authors try to break it down to the public to understand the discussion outcome of the government jobs being outsourced use the law of how and where to imposed rules and regulation on those contractors signed up to the government job at their own past. According to the article it showed that since 1996, there is a good number of government’s jobs contracted out in millions, especially civilian jobs as well as military manpower to contractors. In addition, though the government is claiming that might be privatization seems little contradicting the government rules and regulations, still the federal government pouring millions of dollars into the hands of personal experts to do their jobs. Comparing the federal workers to state, the state’s workers are double federal workers more than 75 percent. But the question is, would private contractors abide by laws and regulation of government transparency as well as the values of federal government? Nevertheless, with all these issue going on, the federal government is not contended with the deal of outsourcing the administrative constitutional rule norms. Since the example in the article shows and explains how privatization never been a problem to the government while the government itself making it hard and contradicting itself. Because there was a job delegated

Products and services are fairly similar across all developed nations, however the delivery of these products and services differ based on structure of the nation’s economy. The economy of a nation can be widely privatized, publicly funded or combinations of the two. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) were created as a way to fuse private and public functions together to create a more efficient and cost-effective method of delivery. Otherwise known as state-owned company, state enterprise, publicly owned corporation, government business enterprise, and in a Canadian context referred to as Crown Corporations. Crown Corporations have been part of the Canadian public sector for over a century, primarily as a reaction of the government to answer a

All organizations strive to streamline operations, which in turn should lead to saving money. Fighting the wasting of resources should be a top priority for any government entity and particularly for supervisors, managers, and executives. In the public sector this is particularly true because the citizens in effect supply the resources wasted. The public trust should not be abused by careless or needless spending. However, because of the bureaucratic nature of any government agency, some waste cannot readily be avoided. The laws and regulations that have been duly enacted to secure justified expenditures in and of themselves can cause waste.

Like most public agencies, DPSS operates under the elite model of organizational structure. This structure dictates that formal rules and process are followed in order to reach the organization's goals. Therefore, in order to effectively contract out and maintain and effective organization, management must engage in the practice of well-known management principles (POSDCORB). Practicing the principles of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting, management can make sound decisions about the implementation and management of contracts. The effectiveness and efficiency in which the agency is run and the manner in which the contract is managed is grounded in the effective practice of these principles.

The need for financial stringency in public organizations due to budgetary pressures and tax resistance coupled with the need to Managing /balancing budget deficits and provide quality services with a reduction in revenue has always been a major challenge for public organizations. The need to save money and at the same time provide quality services, had forced government agencies to privatize and contract out. Recently, there is greater involvement of the private and nonprofit sector in public service delivery. More and more government functions in service delivery are now carried out by private and nonprofit organization. This is one part attributed to the belief that private organizations can provide services more efficiently and effectively than government operated services. And the other is the fact that it is cost effective and takes a lesser time frame. These two process are indeed unarguably beneficial to the government and private sector as well as the beneficiaries, but they can be also very daunting accompanied with huge challenges especially when not executed in the rightful manner. The case of the crummy contractor by Rainey depicts such a complex situation , where the process of contracting out was poorly conducted. The case highlights the demand for privatization and contracting-out and most importantly some of the challenges of privatization and contracting in government organization. it goes on further to identify some crucial pointed to be

In the following paragraphs, I will explain the dominant theory in public administration practice and elaborate on the major theoretical assumptions of the Old Public Administration. As stated in the question, the world has transformed through globalization, information technology, and devolution of authority since the latter part of the last century. The dominant theory in public administration has been replaced from the traditional rule-based, authority-driven processes of the Old Public Administration with market-based, competition-driven tactics in the New Public Management, beginning in the 1980s (Kettl, 2000, p. 3). This was an effort to privatize government and streamline public administration to maximize efficiency and productivity. Heavily relying on market mechanisms to guide public programs, public administrators in the New Public Management are encouraged to “steer, not row,” meaning they should not bear the burden of delivering services, but instead define programs that others will carry out, through contracting or other means (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2011, p. 13). Core values of the New Public Management include using private sector and business approaches to the public sector, squeezing as many services as possible from smaller revenues, market style incentives, providing customers more choices, and focusing on outputs and outcomes instead of mainly processes.

Beginning in the 1980s, many jurisdictions started to seek third-party alternatives to provide public service under the pressure for cost savings and the call for government efficiency. Private organizations are known for their expertise in specific fields – if leverage private sector know-how well, it can bring success to public sector – high quality public services can be delivered with lower costs. Therefore, public organizations can concentrate on solving critical tasks when they contract out the mundane work to private sector. Outsourcing waste management is one of the effective privatization solutions for public organizations given its easy-to-measure nature, and it continues to be popular among local governments. Nevertheless, the success of privatizing government services is not guaranteed. If not manage privatization well, it could result in increased costs, organization structure and culture change or legal liabilities. In addition, take advantage of privatizing public services redefines the nature of government service and governance as it creates a partnership between private and public sector. With the rapid pace of technology development and the obligation of government to spend taxpayer’s money strategically, privatizing government services has gained unstoppable momentum.

Public organizations and the public administrators have an important duty of promoting and maintaining democratic government especially by ensuring good governance. Social and economic development can be achieved through good governance. Collaborative governance is a primary component of good governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Admittedly, public management reforms are fundamental to improving the abilities of various nations to address issues that touch on democratic government. Some of the