HR Green ASD for Local Governments Handbook - Executive Summary - Manual (Page 2)

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Kurt Thurmaier
Purpose
This handbook serves as a primer, a prelude to your local government developing and implementing an
alternative approach to delivering public services in your community. It is not designed to be the bible of
alternative service delivery (ASD) options. A major goal of this handbook is to synthesize academic and
practitioner knowledge about ASDs so local governments can build innovative capacity for providing public
services more effectively and efficiently. This project developed from multiple conversations with local
government practitioners who were frustrated that there were no real handbooks that provided information
on how to think about alternative service delivery methods for public services, and in what circumstances
were different alternatives more successful or less successful. This handbook is written for both elected
officials and appointed managers who want this information.
Why does your local government want to develop an alternative service delivery modality for a public service?
Because contracting out is in vogue? Because public-private partnership sounds good and wins votes? As you
will learn in this book, developing and implementing an alternative service delivery modality needs to be
driven by a desire to improve service effectiveness.
The goal of the study is to address four basic aspects of ASD: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• the impetus for the alternative delivery
• economic considerations
• political considerations
• lessons learned from other communities considering ASD options
• a Readiness Checklist to guide ASD decision making.
This project is distinct from other research about ASD. We have purposefully engaged both managers and
elected officials in the discussion with public management scholars. Most research separates managers and
elected officials: research usually either talks to managers or talks to elected officials. But we know that policy
is developed, adopted, and implemented in collaboration between managers and elected officials.
Definitions of terms
There are many ways to define alternative service delivery methods. Many officials casually interchange terms
like contracting out and managed competition. In some communities, any contact between the private and public
sectors is a public-private partnership. We are a bit more careful in our terms, even though we recognize overlaps
among the categories. In this handbook, alternative service delivery options include contracting for services,
managed competition, interlocal agreements, service consolidation (e.g., joint E911 system), and public-private-partnerships (3P).
Although privatization is an option for local officials, it is rarely taken as a decision for political reasons and is
excluded from this handbook. For our purposes, privatization is defined as the government getting out of the service or
product completely. Privatization involves a decision to change a government-owned and government-operated commercial activity
or enterprise to private sector control and ownership. The government neither produces nor finances the activity after
it is privatized. If it is to be available to citizens, they will be customers of a private firm that is charging them
for a service or good. Similarly, wholesale city-county consolidations (or city-city consolidations) are very rare,
and are excluded from our analysis.
Figure 1 illustrates several ideas that are at the heart of this project. First, one notes that the boundary of core
service delivery by the local government is obscured by the ASD options extending from the core service
area. Each venture with an ASD blurs the boundary of the local government’s service delivery.