Konkurranseutsetting

Outsourcing is nothing new for public sector. Cooperation between economic producing units where one unit, within the framework of a contractual relationship, produces on behalf of the other, is something that has taken place in both the private and public sector for a long time. This became part of a deliberate political strategy throughout the 1980s in response to criticism of the public sector for producing at too high a unit cost. The logic behind outsourcing was that the introduction of a market in the production of public services should improve efficiency in the public sector. In this chapter, we first discuss how the concept of outsourcing can be understood and what justifications from business economics and market economics are necessary for us to theoretically justify that the introduction of a market should have the desired effects. Then we discuss two examples where outsourcing has been carried out, nursing homes and waste collection, to see what kind of experiences that have been gained. The experiences from outsourcing do not give unambiguous results and there are many factors to be aware of when carrying out competitive tendering, both on the basis of theoretical considerations and practical implementation.