Järelevalve teostamine avalike teenuste lepingulisel delegeerimisel Eesti kohalikes omavalitsustes: kodanikeühenduste näitel
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
This Bachelor thesis analyzes monitoring contracting out of public services to
non-governmental organizations (hereafter: NGO). The relevance of this topic derives
from conflicting notions regarding the importance of monitoring. Many authors (Brown
and Potoski 2003a: 155; Hefetz and Warner 2004: 186) have stressed the importance of
monitoring by the public sector and developing a sufficient capacity to do that when
contracting out public services. However, in practice it has been found that in case of
contracting out of public services, the public sector might actually be less motivated to
conduct monitoring or not be able to do it.
Thus, the author aims to provide an analysis regarding the role and importance
of the public sector in conducting monitoring when it contracts out public services to
NGOs. In particular, the focus is on local governments as contractees and non-profit
associations (hereafter: NPA) as contractors in Estonia. In addition, the author seeks to
assess Estonian local governments’ monitoring practices in cases of public services
contracted out to NPAs. In order to meet these objectives, there are two research tasks:
(a) an analysis of theoretical literature and various researches on the subject field and
(b) an empirical analysis (based on content analysis of contracts signed between local
governments and NPAs and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews
conducted via telephone with the representatives of local governments) regarding
monitoring practices in Estonian local governments. 13 local governments and 34
contracted services were included to the empirical analysis.
It appeared that in Estonia the relationships between local governments and
NPAs are mostly based on trust and this seems to reduce the relevance of monitoring in
the eyes of local governments. Only in a few cases could local governments be
considered to be “smart buyers“ in terms of monitoring. Mostly, however, local governments rely on a minimum programme of monitoring in order to collect the
overall information regarding service provision and to show that they are not
completely passive. In that, the financial control is most important. Thorough
monitoring is not conducted on a regular basis and local governments seem to become
more active only when problems with service provision should appear. In addition to
the trustful relationships between local governments and NPAs, limited local
government capacity and few resources also seem to limit the practice of thorough
monitoring. It was also surprising that the usage of informal monitoring measures was
very popular among Estonian local governments – this, perhaps, can be attributed to the
phenomenon of small communities. In conclusion, it is relevant for the local
governments to pay more attention to monitoring contracting out of public services as
there are potential threats even in case of NGOs.