Government Leader home > August 2005 issue
August 2005; Vol. 1 No. 3
Riding the New Wave in Public-Private Partnerships
By Richard W. Walker
Other stories on the Partnership Imperative are:
Government agencies can no longer afford to go it alone.
“Very few—I might even be so bold as to say, virtually no—single government agency has the resources or expertise by itself to solve the problems it faces,” said Patricia McGinnis, president of the Council for Excellence in Government in Washington.
“Therefore, obviously you have to think about how to leverage the resources and expertise you have and how to create the right kinds of strategic partnerships to have more impact.” Partnerships, in fact, are becoming an increasingly important tool for agencies.
The National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, for example, used its modest annual budget to form a sophisticated network of alliances that is widely viewed as a prime example of the next wave in public-private partnerships.
In their book Governing by Network: the New Shape of the Public Sector (Brookings Institution Press, 2004), William D. Eggers and Stephen Goldsmith argue that Golden Gate represents a broader shift in governance around the world. “Its heavy reliance on partnerships, philosophy of leveraging nongovernmental organizations to enhance public value, and varied and innovative business relationships are all hallmarks of these shifts,” they said.
The Agency for International Development’s Global Development Alliance is another example, linking U.S. foreign assistance with resources from business, nongovernmental organizations, philanthropies and humanitarian groups. Total number of partners? More than 300.
The Global Combat System-Army’s partnership, on the other hand, involves a creative relationship with a single contractor, Northrop Grumman Corp. It’s not simply an outsourcing arrangement. The partners stress seamless teamwork and common goals. At their best, McGinnis said, such alliances are really joint ventures.
Government Leader takes a detailed look at how each of these partnerships reflects a new way of managing government resources.
To be sure, forming and managing sophisticated, complex alliances is not easy.
“This is hard work,” Eggers told Government Leader. “It’s more difficult to do than hierarchical government. But the upside is so much greater.”
McGinnis agreed. “Managing a partnership does present more complexity than managing an internal operation,” she said. “But at the same time, the degree of complexity is exceeded by the impact if you get it right.”
Partnerships require “a whole different type of public employee, manager and even Cabinet officer—people who can see outside the boundaries of their own agencies, people are good at mediation and negotiation, partnership management and contract management,” Eggers said. “That’s very different than simply managing your own employees. So you’ve got a big human-capital challenge.”
Said McGinnis, “It does require a different set of skills and it makes managing these relationships a lot more important than simply reading a report or checking on the results from time to time.”
Then there’s the accountability issue. “You have more of a diffusion of accountability with a number of actors,” Eggers said. “How do you essentially get everyone on the same page so they’re working toward a common goal? The federal government has had a very difficult time with contract management, and network management is in some respects more complex than that.”
But despite those complexities, it can be done, as our case studies demonstrate. The successful partnerships all exhibit some common characteristics, McGinnis said.
“You have to be clear about the role of the partners, what they are each responsible for, what they are going to contribute and how their contribution is going to be measured,” she said. “And you have to share information in a seamless way.”
Getting it right from the start is critical. “It has to be set up so that it is really one virtual team,”McGinnis said.
Other stories on the Partnership Imperative are:
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