A study on the performance of labour outsourcing in the public sector

Abstract

Governments in many countries are gradually adjusting their traditional concepts and committing private businesses to conducting governmental business and services in order to achieve economic and operational goals and to introduce more dynamic technologies from private organisations for better financial flexibility. With a freely competitive mechanism in private markets, the quality and efficiency of public services could be effectively promoted in order to enhance economic benefits. Using data from garbage clean-up outsourcing in various districts under the 2008-2010Environmental Protection Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist Productivity Analysis were combined to measure the total efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PTE), and scale efficiency (SE) of the garbage clean-up services in 11 districts in Kaohsiung City to provide follow-up information on the garbage clean-up outsourcing initiative of the Environmental Protection Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government. The empirical results for overall efficiency show that optimal total efficiency was reported in the Hsin-hsing District (0.99), optimal pure technical efficiency in the Hsin-hsing District (0.99), and optimal scale efficiency in the San-min District (1.00).