IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

A public-private partnership is a cooperative arrangement between public and private sector officials. The public sector encompasses national and sub-national governments and agencies, while the private sector encompasses for-profit corporations as well as non-profit organizations outside the public sector. A partnership between the public and private sectors establishes a formal mechanism for sharing information and resources and undertaking joint action. These partnerships can center on consultative mechanisms for policy formulation, oversight mechanisms for greater accountability, or contractual agreements for providing public services. Consultations between public and private sector officials can improve policy formulation in at least two ways. First, consultations bring in a wider pool of expertise to the policy deliberations. This can be especially helpful in some of the more technical or rapidly changing policy areas, such as pharmaceutical or telecommunication regulations. Second, consultations provide a venue for the articulation of citizen needs and preferences, so the policies better address these considerations. This kind of consultative policymaking fosters ownership and reduces opposition to the resulting policies. Consultative mechanisms can take the form of more permanent structures, such as advisory boards, commissions, councils, and town meetings, or more ad hoc structures, such as task forces, action planning workshops, public hearings and focus groups.

Oversight mechanisms between the public and private sectors can increase accountability in government. Citizen participation on oversight boards provide a fairly common means for monitoring government activities, and tend to occur in more sensitive areas of government, such as budgets and complaints hotlines. Other arrangements that foster oversight of public administration include monitoring of public procurement processes, making price comparisons of standardized goods across schools, hospitals, or other public institutions, and conducting customer satisfaction surveys or "report cards" on public services. Transparency International, a Berlin-based international NGO with local chapters in more than 90 countries, has initiated many innovations in this area, which are detailed in the corruption fighters' tool kit on their website at www.transparency.org/toolkits/index.html.

Partnerships between the public and private sectors can also improve service delivery. Contractual agreements that allow the private sector to participate in the provision of public services can supplement state capacity, introduce competition, and foster community ownership. Contracting out, co-management and co-financing are different arrangements for bringing the private sector into service delivery. Where such partnerships are new, they may entail modifications to existing legal and regulatory frameworks as well as the development of standards, regulatory instruments, model contracts and tendering documents. In addition to these formal requirements, private participation in service delivery also requires the involvement of community stakeholders throughout the process of planning and developing a project.

In South Africa, for example, Research Triangle Institute (RTI) has worked with the Department of Constitutional Development to encourage municipalities to explore public-private partnerships in the delivery of public services. RTI helped to draft a new policy framework for such partnerships, wrote a set of guidelines on best practices in planning, procurement and monitoring through these partnerships, wrote a citizens' guide to municipal service partnerships, and provided technical support to the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit, which helps guide the preparation and negotiation of concession contracts and other forms of partnerships for South African municipalities. RTI assistance was instrumental in moving forward several long-term water and sanitation concessions, including the Dolphin Coast and Nelspruit concession contracts.

Quelle: Development Gateway, 26.01.2004