Defense Partnerships: Documenting Trends and Emerging Topics for Action

Abstract

Abstract : Public-public and public-private and partnerships (P4s) are time-proven effective solutions for delivering public services at reasonable costs when deployed and managed properly. Various U.S. agencies1 and international organizations all have longstanding successful P4 initiatives and projects. Recently, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders have expressed increased interest in implementing P4s throughout their organizations.2 As DOD is faced with evolving roles and missions in an unpredictable and complex world amid fiscal constraints, the expertise and involvement of the private sector and other public organizations will be essential. 3 P4s could be ideal tools intended to further policy objectives, enhance U.S. operational capabilities, reduce costs, gain access to nonmilitary expertise or assets, or build greater capacity in partners. 4 While the need for P4s is fairly well articulated, there are still serious hurdles to their implementation, with a general lack of explicit guidance, best practices, and frameworks for implementing P4s consistently, optimally, or at an enterprise level within and across DOD. P4s can be extremely diverse from one another in terms of formality, structure, objective, complexity, stakeholders, and scope of activity elements that make enterprise-level consistency difficult. This leaves P4 practitioners and organizations in a unique situation, one in which creativity, collaboration, and alternate approaches are expressly encouraged to achieve a variety of project objectives, while bound by legal, political, mission, and financial frameworks that have not yet been established, approved, or tested on an enterprise scale.