Commissioning of public services: cooperation and strategic approaches

Abstract

Because of increasing complexity and pressure on services, from both financial and delivery perspectives, public administrators increasingly explore new public-private service delivery approaches. This article undertakes a review of the commissioning literature and compares the approach with traditional procurement. It is argued that commissioning goes beyond traditional procurement and outsourcing agendas by prioritizing on cooperation and strategic outcome enablement, two forces that shape both service delivery on one side and procurement on the other.