Recent years have been no golden age for government-business relations in the United States. The financial meltdown of 2008, and its aftermath, set the tone – and the dominant note was decidedly sour. Major private-sector institutions collapsed, and trillions of dollars were lost in a catastrophe that most commentators think could have been avoided if the parties involved – the government and businesses – had been more responsible. The ultimate bailouts – many to institutions now revealed to have been (at best) imprudent and (in most cases) deceitful – have put the nation in poor fiscal health for years to come. Canada was fortunate to escape comparatively unscathed from these events, and its citizens surely must think that the government-business nexuses in its large southern neighbour have gone severely awry. But, as is often the case, the conventional wisdom represents a combination of overreaction and tunnel vision. There have certainly been lamentable instances of public-private collaboration in recent years, but there have been many admirable successes as well.
Our recent book, Collaborative Governance: Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times, identifies an important phenomenon that has greatly enriched public performance in the U.S., as well as in other nations. But the good news about collaboration – the neglected part of the landscape – has received less notice than its promise warrants. Governments at all levels in the U.S. have increasingly called on private parties – both for-profit and non-profit – to deliver services that were formerly provided directly by governments themselves. We are not referring to traditional outsourcing, such as contracting with private companies to pick up garbage or pave roads. Outsourcing has its place (and its hazards) but we are concerned with something different. The distinctive feature of collaborative governance is the sharing of discretion between the public and private parties on a deliberate and attentive basis.
A hallmark case, noticed by any periodic visitor to New York, is the resurrection of Central Park. By the early 1990s, the park had fallen into complete disarray. The city’s park-system budget had been slashed in response to financial woes. A venture into Central Park was a tour of graffiti, litter, untended landscapes, and the not-so-occasional mugger. Through a series of negotiations among visionaries on both the public and private sides of the table, day-to-day management of the park was turned over to a non-profit group, The Central Park Conservancy. The conservancy has poured in tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of volunteer hours, and today the park shines. It is filled with youngsters and oldsters, ballparks and flowerbeds, and citizens walk its paths in safety and comfort late into the evening.
An equally stirring success story of collaborative governance – and a useful illustration of the distinction between collaboration and conventional contracting – was the cleanup of Rocky Flats, a highly contaminated former nuclear-weapons site, which was the responsibility of the Energy Department. Two prior contracts to deal with this contaminated wasteland had failed, and, in the mid-1990s, it was projected that the effort would take another 70 years. The Energy Department tried a new approach. It gave a new contractor, Kaiser-Hill, considerable guidance as to objectives, but a great deal of discretion on how to conduct the cleanup, along with significant incentives for controlling costs. A mere decade later – more than 50 years ahead of schedule – the site had been restored. And its cleanup had been accomplished at a cost of half a billion dollars below the allowed budget.
Canada has major industries dragging metals and petrochemicals out of the ground. Many of the sites where such processes take place, like their equivalents in the United States, are current or future environmental threats. Cleanup efforts will be required. The collaborative governance approach – giving discretion and appropriate incentives to private parties – should be considered.
Full Article
Source: The Mark
Our recent book, Collaborative Governance: Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times, identifies an important phenomenon that has greatly enriched public performance in the U.S., as well as in other nations. But the good news about collaboration – the neglected part of the landscape – has received less notice than its promise warrants. Governments at all levels in the U.S. have increasingly called on private parties – both for-profit and non-profit – to deliver services that were formerly provided directly by governments themselves. We are not referring to traditional outsourcing, such as contracting with private companies to pick up garbage or pave roads. Outsourcing has its place (and its hazards) but we are concerned with something different. The distinctive feature of collaborative governance is the sharing of discretion between the public and private parties on a deliberate and attentive basis.
A hallmark case, noticed by any periodic visitor to New York, is the resurrection of Central Park. By the early 1990s, the park had fallen into complete disarray. The city’s park-system budget had been slashed in response to financial woes. A venture into Central Park was a tour of graffiti, litter, untended landscapes, and the not-so-occasional mugger. Through a series of negotiations among visionaries on both the public and private sides of the table, day-to-day management of the park was turned over to a non-profit group, The Central Park Conservancy. The conservancy has poured in tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of volunteer hours, and today the park shines. It is filled with youngsters and oldsters, ballparks and flowerbeds, and citizens walk its paths in safety and comfort late into the evening.
An equally stirring success story of collaborative governance – and a useful illustration of the distinction between collaboration and conventional contracting – was the cleanup of Rocky Flats, a highly contaminated former nuclear-weapons site, which was the responsibility of the Energy Department. Two prior contracts to deal with this contaminated wasteland had failed, and, in the mid-1990s, it was projected that the effort would take another 70 years. The Energy Department tried a new approach. It gave a new contractor, Kaiser-Hill, considerable guidance as to objectives, but a great deal of discretion on how to conduct the cleanup, along with significant incentives for controlling costs. A mere decade later – more than 50 years ahead of schedule – the site had been restored. And its cleanup had been accomplished at a cost of half a billion dollars below the allowed budget.
Canada has major industries dragging metals and petrochemicals out of the ground. Many of the sites where such processes take place, like their equivalents in the United States, are current or future environmental threats. Cleanup efforts will be required. The collaborative governance approach – giving discretion and appropriate incentives to private parties – should be considered.
Full Article
Source: The Mark
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