Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are growing in popularity as a governing model for delivery of public goods and services. PPPs have existed since the Roman Empire, but their expansion into traditional public projects today raises serious questions about public accountability. This article examines public accountability and its application to government and private firms involved in PPPs. An analytical framework is proposed for assessing the extent to which PPPs provide (or will provide) goods and services consistent with public sector goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Six dimensions—risk, costs and benefits, political and social impacts, expertise, collaboration, and performance measurement—are incorporated into a model that assists public managers in improving partnerships’ public accountability.
The article analyzes contracting challenges faced by Italian health care authorities and U.S. procurement officials in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, and it provides practitioner-derived lessons for improving procurement in times of disaster. The lessons we have learned so far emphasize (a) the need to recognize the strategic role of procurement, (b) empowering procurement officials, (c) formalized coordinative mechanisms cannot ensure effectiveness without trust among different governance levels, (d) the ability to identify reliable and proactive suppliers of personal protective equipment, (e) the importance of stimulating the economic market to diversify the production of needed materials and to ensure a more risk-resilient supply chain, and (f) the critical role of public–private collaborations to ensure responsiveness and resilience of health care systems.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.