“This important report presents a new perspective on the challenges now faced by government to more effectively, efficiently, and creatively partner with the private sector to develop and implement new models of contracting. Professor Williams, an associate professor of civil engineering at Rutgers University, uses his experience in analyzing the competitive bidding process for large construction projects, such as the building of highways, to contrast the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model of contracting with the traditional model of government procurement. The report is written in laymen’s terms for government executives to better understand new forms of public-private contracting partnerships and their potential for a wide variety of government activities. The message of the Williams report is that the public-private partnerships should no longer be limited to highway and other large infrastructure projects. New models are now being used throughout the world in a wide variety of areas, including education and health projects.”
“Private capital has become a significant feature of infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs) on the premise that it incentivizes diligent risk management among private partners. This paper evaluates this claim by examining the PPP programme in Ontario, Canada, where the amount of long-term private capital in…
“Initially, governance networks were intended as tools for making public governance more effective. Yet, scholars have argued that governance networks also have the potential to democratize public governance. This article provides an overview of theoretical arguments pertaining to the democratizing impact of governance networks. It…
“Social impact bonds, a recent innovation in social finance, are designed to harness capital and knowledge from private nonprofit, for‐profit, and public entities to address pressing social problems. Although there is great policy interest in understanding how social impact bonds can be used to tackle…
“The public-private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address ‘emergency’ food needs and has since grown into a regularized social welfare system of grocery and meal provision and related program delivery, realized through the collective efforts of organizations and individuals. We explore…
“The public pays for and provides an incredible amount of data to governments and companies. Yet much of the value of this data is being wasted, remaining in silos rather than being shared to enhance the common good—whether it’s helping governments to stop opioid addiction…
“In our latest City Accelerator guide, ‘Resilience, Equity, and Innovation,’ we share the tools and processes four cities, Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, San Francisco and Washington D.C., explored in an effort to increase equity and fund infrastructure. With new approaches to managing public resources, these cities…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“From climate change to terrorism, the difficulties confronting policy makers are unprecedented in their variety, but also in their complexity. Our existing policy tool kit seems stale and outdated. Increasingly, it is clear, we need not only new solutions but also new methods for arriving…
“To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together. Data—specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments,…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…