March 2007 Report

Title: Joining-up for regional Development: How governments deal with a wicked problem, overlapping policies and fragmented responsibilities Reference: 2007:2 Number of pages: 222 Language: English & Swedish Executive Summary: Copied from pages 21 & 22 PSI Relevance: The bulk of PSI that has potential for re-use is at the local level. Currently there are a huge number of public sector bodies at the local level. To deliver integrated policies at the local level also brings in partnerships, which may have an impact on PSI re-use. How well the public sector is joined up also has an impact on the quality and currency of the PSI.

“Executive summary

Regional economic development is a policy area which governments describe as a mess with too many actors and too many uncoordinated initiatives. Programs in areas such as skills development and support for small businesses can be more efficient if resources are pooled and information shared. Collaboration in partnerships and other forms of "joined-up government" are introduced in many countries to bring about coherence and a greater impact of public investments.

This study looks at twelve western countries to learn about their problems and solutions. The ambition is to draw conclusions for the design of public management and especially how systems of monitoring and evaluation could be designed to supply national governments with information to coordinate policies.

The study first looks at three factors which contribute to the fragmentation of government: the complexity of the economic problems, the bundle of policies to solve them and the constitutional fragmentation. Then it looks at strategies for integration and principles of public management. Patterns are discussed and implications are drawn for Sweden.

The starting point is the problem of regional economic growth. It is a “wicked problem”, very difficult for governments to do something about and riddled with attempts to help. The problems of regional growth are largely the same across the twelve countries.

All countries have policies in many different areas. There is a small group of policies specifically aimed at regional development. Other policies support small business development regardless of place. The largest amount of resources is in policies with more general purposes such as education, labor market and infrastructure. All countries report a lack of coordination but there are differences in the design and emphasis of the policies.

The countries differ greatly in the way governments operate and are regulated. A number of features contribute to horizontal fragmentation across policy fields and the means to overcome them by central coordination vary across nations. Vertical fragmentation is more complex than just a division of unitary and federal countries. Public-private integration is also different across countries.

The main strategies for central government to overcome fragmentation are five: stronger central control, predefined projects of “joined-up government”, devolution, deconcentration and encouragement of autonomous coordination. Many governments try several strategies simultaneously but certain paths are closed by traditions and constitutions.

The use of public management tools to integrate governments are mainly found in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Techniques include joint outcome targets, an aligned structure of individual output targets and the setting up of partnerships for collaboration. Each of these can be monitored and evaluated and there is also the possibility of crosscutting reviews, within yearly spending reviews or as an independent exercise.

There are three main implications from this perspective on Sweden: a need for better integration of the cabinet, a need for more qualified information about causal analyses of issues that cut across sectors, and a need to develop the public management framework to focus more on drivers and barriers for performance, integration and economic growth.”

November 2005 Report

Title: Competition at the Public Private Interface Reference: 2005: 19A Number of pages: 71 Language: English ISBN: 91-7220-595-4 F orward: Copied from page 5

“Competition has been a topic of heated debate since the early 1990s. Various government commissions of inquiry have striven to analyse its challenges and elucidate its potential. Many of the issues involved apply to the competition that arises at the interface between the private and the public sectors. These have a bearing on numerous policy areas and touch on several central and local government agencies. In many cases the same issue has been dealt with repeatedly, but without culminating in a decision. Instead, yet another commission has been appointed.

In this year’s Budget Bill, the Government emphasises the guidelines of administrative policy. Once again, it stresses the need for focusing and demarcation of agencies’ core activities. State ownership is to be reviewed, and activities extraneous to the core are to be phased out. Again, too, the Swedish Parliament has addressed the issue of equal competitive terms for the private and public sectors, and asked the Government to propose remedies for the problems involved.

We are publishing this report to disseminate knowledge of the Swedish Agency for Public Management’s work on competition issues in the public sector in recent years. We want to share our experience, and we hope it will be helpful in the task of further assessment. In our ambition to express ourselves as concisely as possible, we sometimes summarise and simplify complex topics. To see the whole picture clearly, one must therefore refer to the reports and surveys that served as documentation for this publication.

This publication covers not only the issues and subject areas that the Swedish Agency for Public Management has investigated. We deal with related decisions taken by the Government and Parliament after we submitted our reports. We also provide a brief account of current proposals from official inquiries that are too recent to have been processed and put into practice as yet.

Readers interested in obtaining more information about this report and its background, or about the work of the Swedish Agency for Public Management on competition issues in the public sector, are welcome to contact us. Further information is also available on our website. www.statskontoret.se/konkurrens .”

October 2004 Report

Title: Business as usual? Clearer Demarcation between Authorities and Markets Number of pages: 20 Language: English Reference: 2004-4 ISSN: 1401-8438 Introduction: Copied from the report.

“Background

Public players selling goods and services in competition with private undertakings has been an issue of concern for some time now. Previously, the focus of this debate has been on problems relating to publicly owned undertakings. The areas where legislation has proved to be most deficient, however, concern problems in relation to municipalities, county councils and state authorities.

Over a period of many years, Sweden has developed a central administration characterised by relatively small ministries and large independent authorities. Municipalities enjoy a very high degree of independence. In Sweden, public players – alongside their exercising of public authority – also pursue competitive business activities to a relatively great extent.

This problem is accentuated by the fact that the public sector constitutes a very large part of the Swedish economy. Measured as a share of employment, the public sector amounted to 32 percent of the Swedish economy in the year 2002.”