Privatizing Social Services
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The major research questions Van Slyke examines in his discussion of privatizing social services are whether and to what extent they are conducted in a context of free competition and whether the public entities in behalf of which these services are provided are sufficiently subject to impartial government oversight. The first question goes to the issue of whether any kind of special favoritism or patronage is connected with the award of public funds to finance the contract. The second goes to the issue of whether the public entity that awards contracts to private-sector nonprofit service providers has a fully staffed and/or sufficiently competent personnel to see that the public funds for the contract are appropriately allocated as far as the award itself goes, and responsibly and effectively spent as far as the implementation program objective and the performance of and contract specifications go. Focusing on conditions and programs in the state of New York, chiefly at the county level of the bureaucracy, Van Slyke says that the government should be what he terms a smart buyer of private-sector social goods. His analysis of the situation tends toward the view that where privatization of public goods is concerned, neither adequate competition between private-sector service providers nor adequately competent contract administration in the government bureaucracy is the reality.Van Slyke reviews the arguments that advocates of privatization make and the promises it holds out
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ce outcomes were, as well as the impact of privatization on the public employment picture. It also seeks to identify the perception of effectiveness of public oversight of outsourced-entity performance from the standpoint of public officials involved in the process.
The method that the researchers used to obtain data for analysis was a questionnaire sent to the mayors of the 100 cities targeted around the country; 66% responded. In addition to questions about which government activities had been outsourced, which could be statistically analyzed, was one open-ended question asking officials what they had learned from privatization. This research will return to that point.
What they found was that privatization of some services had become a very financially attractive option for many municipalities, with the bulk of outsourcing going for transportation and public works contracts and a smaller but comparable proportion going to health and social services, "support" (presumably administrative/clerical), public safety, and parks and recreation. However, a weakness of summarizing or averaging the distribution of privatized government services across all cities is that individual cities might vary markedly in how their services are dis
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Van Slyke, Ballard Hefetz, Van Slyke's, Moffett Struyk, Moffett Struyk's, Moffett Struyck, van slyke, Slyke DM, Administration Review, January-February Privatization, Digler Moffett, warner ballard hefetz, ballard hefetz, digler moffett, public services, warner ballard, social services, public funds, service providers, moffett struyk, government employees, ballard hefetz 2002, private-sector service providers, digler moffett struyk, services actually delivered,
Approximate Word count = 2656
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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