A Casebook Of Alternative Governance Structures And Organizational Forms

Abstract

Since the earliest days of the Continental Congress, our government has sought alternative organizational and procedural constructs for important government supporting functions and instruments of policy that are inherently commercial in nature. In this modern era, the need for alternatives is even more pressing as the form and nature of government requirements become increasingly complex and budgets are constrained. Some functions by their very definition cannot be performed other than in-house. These inherently governmental functions involve the discretionary use of governmental authority or in some way commit the government to a specific course of action or financial expenditure as stated in 48 CFR 7.5. If an activity is considered commercial or it can be restructured to partition the governmental and commercial functions, competitive sourcing is usually selected to allow the in-house group to participate in the competitive process. Additional tests to determine whether an activity is commercial or governmental are in 0MB Circular A-76. In this report, we consider governance structures and organizational forms that offer alternatives to the usual in-house provision of services. These alternatives often offer a chance to adopt modern business practices, strearnline the organization, and adopt market mechanisms to improve quality, lower costs, and become more responsive to constituencies. The alternatives considered here have a wide variety of characteristics. We found it useful to array them along the dimension of ownership of process and customer base. These range from totally governmental to totally private or somewhere in between.

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