Contract Management and Performance
The 2005 Municipal Yearbook from the International City/County Management Association includes an analysis of “Why do some contractual relationships between local governments and private providers succeed while others fail? Why do some local governments get what they need from a private provider while others do not?”
The authors, Sergio Fernandez of Indiana University and Hal Rainey of the University of Georgia surveyed 439 specific contracts between local governments and private providers. Their analysis of the contracts, outcomes, and management systems is chock full of useful information and advice. Perhaps the most important general finding is that privatization is overwhelmingly successful.
| Table 5 – Types of Service Contracts Surveyed (percent) | |
| Public works/transportation | 44 |
| Public utilities | 3 |
| Public safety | 6 |
| Health and human services | 13 |
| Parks and recreation | 7 |
| Cultural and arts programs | 1 |
| Support functions | 26 |
The survey compared characteristics of the contracts, such as:
- Type of bidding procedure used: 42 percent by RFP, 35 percent by invitation-to-bid, 18 percent sole source, 5 percent multistage solicitation.
- Previous contractor: 64 percent of the contracts went to a contractor that had been used by the local government in the past to provide the same service.
- Contract incentives: 52 percent of contracts included offered an incentive of contract renewal based on good performance, 5 percent offered gain sharing, 2 percent included bonuses for reaching specific goals.
The authors wanted to learn how broad in scope are the contract monitoring practices of local governments and how many aspects of contracts are evaluated. One of the most interesting findings is that there is very little use of citizen surveys, even though that is considered in some sense the ultimate measure of performance. In general, though, their results are not surprising in that “those types of monitoring that are more expensive and difficult to implement, such as citizen surveys and performance measurement systems, tend to be adopted with lesser frequency.” [Note: For information on the importance of making contract management a part of local governments core capabilities, see Governing by Network and Reason’s How-to Guide for performance-based contracting.]
| Table 6 – Use of Different Monitoring Tools and Procedures | ||||||
| Frequency of use | ||||||
| Never | A few times a year | About once a month | About every 2 weeks | About once a week | Several times a week | |
| Inspections of work in progress | 12 | 20 | 15 | 7 | 21 | 26 |
| Inspections of work completed | 11 | 17 | 19 | 7 | 24 | 22 |
| Complaints monitoring | 12 | 18 | 16 | 8 | 18 | 28 |
| Examination of contractor reports | 21 | 20 | 35 | 6 | 11 | 7 |
| Performance measurement system | 46 | 18 | 20 | 3 | 6 | 6 |
| Citizen surveys | 74 | 22 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Percentages not equal to 100% due to rounding |
Political Support and Contractor Performance
It is no surprise that management and elected officials tend to support privatization more than do frontline employees (Table 7). But it is surprising that 9 percent of frontline workers are at least somewhat supportive. The high degree of political support found in the survey isn’t entirely surprising given that these are cities that do contract out services. Past surveys show that local governments experience success with privatization. And the survey does not tell us to what extent political support led to privatization, and to what extent the success of privatization has increased political support, but the local governments rate the performance of privatization very highly (Table 8).
| Table 7 – Political Support for Contracting Out (percent) | ||||
| Not at all supportive | Not very supportive | Somewhat supportive | Very supportive | |
| Top management | <0.5 | 1 | 19 | 80 |
| Elected officials | <0.5 | 1 | 30 | 69 |
| Middle management | <0.5 | 4 | 32 | 65 |
| Frontline workers | 1 | 9 | 40 | 50 |
| Percentages not equal to 100% due to rounding |
| Table 8 – Dimensions of Contractor Performance (percent) | ||||
| Poor | Fair | Very good | Excellent | |
| Actual cost in comparison to projected cost | 1 | 12 | 61 | 26 |
| Actual costs in comparison to in-house service delivery | 3 | 14 | 55 | 29 |
| Quality of work | 1 | 15 | 55 | 29 |
| Responsiveness to government requirements | 1 | 15 | 53 | 31 |
| Timeliness | 2 | 17 | 57 | 24 |
| Continuity of service (no disruptions) | 2 | 16 | 50 | 32 |
| Compliance with the law | <0.5 | 7 | 55 | 38 |
| Customer satisfaction | 1 | 14 | 64 | 21 |
| Percentages not equal to 100% due to rounding |
Finally, the authors scoured through the survey responses to try to determine what contract elements seem to lead to successful contractual relationships. They conclude that success is most often seen when:
- The parties work together to arrive at solutions to problems that arise during the life of the contract;
- The parties trust each other;
- Public managers and employees support (or do not oppose) the contracting initiative;
- The contracting process is well funded;
- The task performed by the contractor is relatively simple to accomplish;
- Public managers rely on the occasional threat or sanction to enforce the agreement;
- Public managers conduct a more thorough evaluation of the contractor’s capacity to meet the local government’s needs; and
- The parties engage in frequent communication during the life of the contract.
Again the information summarized here is only a fraction of the good stuff in the article.