Public administration in the 21st century is based on the concept of governance where as the counterpart in the 20th century on the one-sidedness of government. Governance means partnership between public and private sectors in dealing with social iss...
Public administration in the 21st century is based on the concept of governance where as the counterpart in the 20th century on the one-sidedness of government. Governance means partnership between public and private sectors in dealing with social issues. The basic spirit is to expand the role of private sector while the government focuses on drawing blueprint for the future of a society; pulse-reading of public opinion and prioritizing; mobilizing resources to deal with social issues. Contracting out is expected to increase in this context. This paper sketches the realities of contraction out in Korean local government with a case study method. More specifically, it collects all cases of contracting out of a local government (hereafter A city) and analyzes the characteristics from them. The research result tells that contracting out in A city started to increase since 2000 and expected to increase in the future. In spite of the significant increase, there was no clear motivation and policy direction in connection with contracting out. In addition, contracting out was concentrated on a few services and there was lack of transparency in the process of awarding contract. Lastly, problems were identified in connection with evaluating the results of contracting out. This paper suggests policy options for addressing the above problems.