Evaluating Competitively Tendered Contracts

Abstract

‘New Public Management’ issues are currently challenging local governments throughout the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The quest for a reorientation towards results rather than inputs raises questions concerning the role of evaluation tools within the new governance mechanisms being created. Although local governments have some sectoral experiences with evaluation, management by results forces a broadening of knowledge about all services provided. Transparency of competition policies and their procedures is a key to evaluating competitively tendered contracts. However, local governments must accept and balance three different sets of criteria: first, the traditional professional perspective, second, customer-defined criterias, and third—which is least developed in all local governments included in the sample—political criteria. Integrated, coherent and consistent evaluation approaches are the key, not necessarily new evaluation tools.