Advantages and Disadvantages of Contracting Out In The Public Sector
Introduction
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.
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He has also privatized trash collection, printing, and street repair. By doing so, he Ahas reduced city staff other than public safety personnel by 30 [%] over two years.@ http://www.ncpa.org/pd/private/privb3.html The employees from the contracted-out company have replaced city staff.
Advantages Of Hiring Contract Employees.
Why is contracting out so attractive to a public agency? Privatizing has its advantages that represent benefits to the agency.
Although reducing costs and improving services have been cited as the most important reasons services are privatized by agencies, contracting out offers the attractiveness of hiring a contract employee over a public employee. This occurs because of the apparent advantages offered by such options (Dilger et al. 23). Some advantages of hiring a contract employee over a civil servant are as follows:
Hiring And Training Costs Are Reduced
Reduction Of Hiring Costs Hiring a civil service employee involves recruiting, testing, interviewing, and selecting a candidate or candidates for given positions. This process is an exhaustive one, which can last for weeks and months, from the initial recruitment to the final selection of a candidate to the position. This long process can amount to thousands of dollars in expenditures. The costs incurred by these steps in the hiring process result from compensation of staff for thousands of additional hours associated with
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
Government contracting is a lucrative industry, both large and small management and technology consulting firms along with defense, aerospace and other companies who bill themselves as "experts" in various different areas complete for billions of dollars in government contracts each year. The benefit of the federal government leveraging the skills and expertise is great; but there is also a downside. Ethical violations can and have occurred within the government contracting arena. This paper will discuss a case that demonstrates ethical violations in government contracting as well as answer the question of how ethical violations in government contracting affect the role of contracting management acquisition.
The privatization of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) services has occurred in all except one of 50 states (McConnell, Burwick, Perez-Johnson, & Winston, 2003). There are substantial differences as to the size and extent of services that are privatized. This paper will first, analyze study provided by the Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) to discuss the benefits and conversely the problems of contracting out. Secondly, this paper will discuss important factors and pitfalls towards contracting effectiveness. Finally, this paper will recommend contracting out while recommending assurances for accountability.
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
With the growing regional population, Federal, State and Local governments will be hard pressed to expand infrastructure and services. For our operations in Georgia and South Carolina, this expansion presents an amazing opportunity in the government contracting arena as well. Federal, State and Local governments are scrambling to develop roads, schools and utility infrastructure. These efforts will require monumental support and services from the private sector. This is where OFS
This specific measure could provide efficient services to the city like in the case of Sandy Springs. The city of Sandy Springs has successfully incorporated in 2005 to a company named CH2 HILL .As a result the city of Sandy Springs does not have current liabilities and its services have met standards of efficiency. Based on that premise the contractor has overseen the process and that the bids with subcontractors were essentially offering prime services. Furthermore, CH2 Hill has also implemented a system where customer service hot lines is offered 24/7 and complaints were resolved and address accordingly without any red tape (ReasonTV,2011). Having the example of Sandy Spring it is evident that the premise of contracting a company to take over the subcontractors’ hiring as well as all services provided should be the best- case scenario to take advantage of the privatization model
Procurement is the process of selecting suppliers and signing contracts for the purchase of goods and services. While simple in definition, quite the opposite is true when it comes to execution. When speaking about public and private sectors, they are two entirely different entities. They have different work principles, different functions and responsibilities in the economy, and different limitations to do work. In the case of government acquisition, the leading and primary objective is for public good, not profit. For a private venture, it is profit for the shareholders. A private company has to have profit as the first priority when awarding procurement contracts. Due to this obvious dichotomy, contractors generally either service
Private industries are able to offer the same programs that their government counterparts are able to plus more, all at a reduced cost to the taxpayer, who would ultimately pay the cost of incarceration, public or private. These programs, such as education, health, and vocational training, are meant to be overseen by federal regulators in order to ensure conformation with standards of quality, but more often than not, corners are cut in order to reduce costs therefor reducing quality. While this may be the case in private penitentiaries, other areas of privatization include community centers and other forms of alternative punishments. It is cheaper for a private company to monitor to whereabouts of an individual that hiring governmental personnel to do the same job, in terms of electronic monitoring, and there could be a higher offender to staff ratio due to the lower cost of the staffs
The purpose of this paper will be to look at the outsourcing of services in the government sector. When a government is thinking about outsourcing many questions and concerns arise. For example: What are the benefits of outsourcing a service to the private sector? Are these benefits greater than the cost it may have? All of which are understandable people want to know if making adjustments is going to be beneficial and cost effective. Prison population continues to grow and
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
There are several factors and aspects to consider when determining the benefits and disadvantages of using an outside vendor for essential services. In my current position, outside vendors are used in business management and support services, food services, and transportation. One of the benefits of utilizing an outside vendor for one or more of the essential services of the school district is that it allows the organization to focus on its core purpose of educating students. Additionally, an outside vendor could potentially hire qualified personnel for hard-to-fill positions as well as find substitutes for staff who are absent. An outside vendor is responsible for providing all of the training and certification requirements for its employees.
5- If the administration continues to outsource city services through competitive bidding and assuming the private sector is able to aggressively under bid the city, the administration will have to dismiss the idle workforce, selloff unused fixed assets and update the ABC estimates accordingly. As the number of outsourced contracts grows in count and size, the administration will also need to enhance its contracting and performance
Engaging independent contractors can be beneficial to employers in various aspects especially to small business owners. Although hiring independent contractors require higher pay, employers are more likely to save money by doing so. Because when businesses hire them, they may not be eligible for benefits such as health insurance or paid for taking time off work, they are not provided coverage by the worker’s compensation insurance, and they will be responsible for submitting their own income taxes. In addition, it also lowers the administrative costs because payroll taxes, CPP and EI do not have to be withheld or remitted. Whereas, when employers hire an employee, there are various expenses that come along, including the cost of employer-contributed
According to Vision Launch, cities have already tried privatization in the past, and the results weren’t too satisfactory. Considering that private financing costs more than public financing, many people are often under the false perception that it is the other way around, which gives them the impression for a short term that privatization will be more beneficial in the long term. Taxpayers in the end are the ones who are left paying for these projects through their monthly bills. Gaining
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.