Research of the Experience of Western GovernmentsProcurement of Public Service

Jia Hong Quan

Summary: Government procurement of public services is developed from the market-oriented reform of public services in Western countries. Many Western countries have adopted the practice of reform and have gained success of this model. By analyzing the process of those in UK, the Netherlands, the United States and France, summing up experience, and I hope thats useful for China's reform.

Keyword: governments procurement of public service, experience, Western countries

Our country is in critical period of economic reform and administrative reform, in order to change the old image of government that was both the referee and the athlete, in order to build service-oriented and rule-oriented government, in order to meet the people's growing demand for a variety of public services, our government must shift from hierarchical mechanism to network operating, namely multi-center public administration. September 2013, the State Council General Office issued the "Guidelines on government procurement of services from social forces." Third Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China's 18 further stressed the need to promote the model of government procurement service. At present, many local governments are actively exploring the new model. However, due to the infancy of theoretical and practical aspects, there are many problems in practice, such as the Government recognizes that not in place, government role fuzzy as well as single mode to purchase services. Government procurement of public services is developed from the market-oriented reform of public services in Western countries. Many Western countries have adopted the practice of reform and have gained success of this model. By analyzing the process of those in UK, the Netherlands, the United States and France, summing up experience, and I hope thats useful for China's reform.

1, The reform practice of Western governments procurement of public service

(1) United Kingdom

1980s, the Thatcher government pioneered the implementation of public services the UK market-oriented reforms, aiming at economy and efficiency, by introducing competition.

UK government to introduce competition in the public sector and actively promote the potential of social forces to participate in the supply of public services, adopted a series of enforcement measures to break the monopoly. For example, the UK government in the form of legislation to enforce public sector and social forces must participate in the huge cost and high risk field of infrastructure construction. Meanwhile, the British government in order to prevent the emergence of public sector or public or private monopolies, has made a series of hard and fast rules in the proportion of shareholders of after privatization of the public sector. For example, the Government requires the individual shareholder shall not exceed 15% of the shares in the electricity sector after privatization within the following five years.

(2) The United States

The early 1990s, the U.S. government on the basis of "Design-based" government service outsourcing first proposed the "performance-based". Ten years after, the new concept has been applied in more than half of the U.S. government service outsourcing application.

"Design-based" government service outsourcing seeks to regulate the behavior of the service providers on the based of the theory that stipulated in the contract must be an optimal method of delivering services. Its characteristics are: paying for inputs and processes; likely to cause antagonistic relationship between government and the social forces; governments regulations limiting the behavior of social organization; public service providers can provide the services required under the terms basically; less responsibility in society organizations.

"Performance-based" outsourcing of government services in dealing with the relationship between government and the social forces is more flexible. Its characteristics are: payment for the result; cooperative relationship existing between social forces and government; less likely to achieve the expected results, society organizations taking huge responsibilities for the results of their services.

For the government, the focus of the performance-based service outsourcing is contractors jointly developing a viable strategic plan, job performance, evaluation criteria and using the system of multi-year outsourcing. In addition, government should provide technical support for data management. Meanwhile, both sides should pay attention to the training of staff.

(3) Netherlands

1980s, Netherlands central government decentralized the power of decision-making and control on the providers of public services to local governments. According to the principle of Integration of rights and responsibilities, the responsibility and influence of local governments were also increased while deregulation policy was carried out by central government. The goal of reform is to reach responsibilities homing, which means that responsibilities return to directly public service providers and beneficiaries of public services. Shared responsibility and self-management has profound significance for the implementation of the policy-making process of decentralization and deregulation. Meanwhile, the central government still has a lot of authority and responsibility. For example, the decentralization of budgets are allocated to the fund in local municipal, while part of the budget are specified by the central government to ensure that local government budgets are used in these particular regulations or policies. The main principle of government supervision divided among different levels of government is mutually complementary, that the central government is only responsible for top-level supervision. Strengthen mutual cooperation between departments and between agencies, which is the goal of all governments.

(4) France

After World War II, the French social security system has become an important part of all sources of income of the family, when the French social security spending accounted for 29% of GDP. 1982 - 2003 France experienced a decentralized movement. When local governments have been delegated more responsibilities of social service provision, they began to turn to social organization and outsource the supplication of public service to them, because the demand of public service has far exceeded the capacity of local governments.

The French government has been re-legislation to encourage social organizations to participate in public service delivery. At the same time, the French government uses a variety of tools or methods in public service outsourcing. Direct methods include government subsidies, contracts and payments from consumers. Indirect methods include tax incentives, land support, and free staff training. Indirect methods include tax concessions, land support, and free staff training. The French government also provides some targeted preferential polities in order to stimulate social organizations to participate in the supply of specific public services. Consumers payment generally comes from certain families gained social security. For example, parents will receive the social security allowance from government to purchase Childcare Services. Therefore, the payment in the form of service vouchers created a social service to a more market-oriented provision mechanism.

2, revelation and experience

Summing up the market-oriented reform of public service in the above four countries, we can find some revelation and experience.

(1)Government procurement of public services from social organization is not only a way of reducing the budget of government, but also a way to improve the quality of service, to make up for the shortcomings of current service delivery system, to promote the innovation of form in subsidy, to reduce complicated methods and encourage increased flexibility, to explore energy, resources and ways to improve item effectiveness.

(2)To give real autonomy to social organizations government should further transform its functions, promoting separation between government agency and social organizations in the aspects of appointment of staff and so on. Society organizations should initiate voluntarily, no administrative level, no administrative career preparation, and no incumbent part-time staff form government. This is the basis of doing well the work of government procurement of public services and the premise of getting rid of monopoly in the field of public service provision and introducing competition mechanism. In this case, social organizations become bigger and stronger, or weaker and bankrupt, which completely controlled by their own, depending on its action whether complying with the rule of market, depending on whether getting the public trust and support.

(3)The key of government procurement of public services lies in market-oriented and introducing competition mechanism. At present, Some social organizations not only get outsourcing projects through non-competitive manners, but also those organizations are established by some government departments to undertake certain functions transferred from those government departments. Such social organization has become a subordinate or an internal institution of government department. Such model of government purchase of public services is turning them into mere formalities. Such social organization is difficult to grow and develop; such reform is difficult to achieve the desired results. Therefore, the government should select social organization that will undertake certain functions transferred from governments through open and competitive procedures in order to high quality by competition.

(4)Basic principles

① Government procurement of public services has a variety of ways, not just for the contract form, but also government funding subsidies, service vouchers, tax incentives and loan guarantees, while each has its flaws and suitable areas.

②Governments should maximize the use of performance indicators rather than design standards, so as to give social organization more room to own subjective initiative when they provide public service.

③Central government should appropriate decentralize policy formulation, the budget authority and choice of purchase method to stimulate activity at the local level, while central levels should strengthen supervision and guidance, to promote inter-governmental not only perform their duties, but also cooperate with each other.

References:

[1] Wang PuQu. M ? Lester Salamon. Research of government procurement of public services from social organizations[Ｍ]．Peking University Press, 2013(12)

[2] Peng Hao. Experiences of developed countries to promote government procurement of public services[Ｊ]．Financial and Administrative Research，2010(10)