Scott Lamothe’s research while affiliated with University of Oklahoma and other places

The International City/County Management Association’s Alternative Service Delivery (ASD) Survey has been highly influential in the study of make-or-buy and sector choice decisions at the local level. Recently, the reliability of the ASD has been called into question. This paper builds on Lamothe, Lamothe, and Bell’s findings of inconsistencies in these data by comparing 2007 ASD survey results with those found in 2007–2008 administrative data from California. The findings lend further credence to the idea that ASD data should be used with caution and an understanding of its limits and weaknesses, as well as the need to collect more reliable data on local service delivery decisions.

We utilize the two latest ICMA Profile of Local Government Service Delivery Choices surveys to investigate first, whether the service provision and delivery arrangement information reported in the surveys accurately represents reality and second, if not, what potential factors contribute to generating incorrect or unreliable survey responses. We utilize interviews with practitioners to better understand both the accuracy of the survey responses and potential improvements that can be made to the survey instrument. Our results suggest that the ICMA ASD survey data are highly erratic, with more than 70 percent of the cases (N=70) we investigate containing some inaccuracies. Our qualitative analysis shows that the majority of the errors appear to be caused by either lack of clear definitions of service "provision" or the service titles being too vague/broad; both of which likely lead to discretion in interpreting survey questions and thus inconsistent answers by individual respondents over time. Evidence for Practice Points: 1. Our findings suggest that contracting is only one of many policy tools local public managers utilize in delivering local services, which highlights a need for future endeavors to identify the wide variety of innovative delivery arrangements practitioners adopt to meet citizen demands. 2. Collaboration among local governments for service delivery is a widespread practice and takes a variety of forms including, but not limited to, joint service delivery, consortia, and special districts. 3. Local nonprofit organizations, whether human services or arts, are often partners, not contract agents, in local service delivery, operating autonomous programs and providing essential services to local residents with government support. 4. The ICMA ASD data, if improved in accuracy and equipped with greater details regarding the wide array of production modes locales utilize, can serve as a useful source to inform public managers about local innovations in service delivery. 1

Researchers studying local governance, especially alternative service delivery arrangements, have long relied on the ICMA ASD survey to examine the scope and nature of service provision and production at the local level. Building upon Lamothe, Lamothe, and Bell's (2018) findings that raise questions concerning the accuracy of the ASD survey and resulting misconceptions about service provision, this paper refines how provision can be conceptualized and measured to promote a better understanding of local governance. Utilizing a unique survey design that incorporates, but also extends the ASD format, we demonstrate that service provision is multifaceted, and jurisdictions participate in varying degrees of provision activities based on the sector of the producing entity. Our findings highlight the importance of properly accounting for provision activities and call into question the efficacy of the conventional contracting framework as the primary theoretical underpinning of most studies of local service delivery arrangements. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The authors utilize the two latest ICMA Profile of Local Government Service Delivery Choices surveys to investigate whether the service provision and delivery arrangement information reported in the surveys accurately represents reality and, if not, what factors contribute to generating incorrect or unreliable survey responses. Interviews with practitioners are used to better understand both the accuracy of the survey responses and improvements that could be made to the survey instrument. Results suggest that the ICMA ASD survey data are highly erratic, with more than 70 percent of the cases (N = 70) investigated containing some inaccuracies. A qualitative analysis shows that the majority of the errors appear to be caused by the lack of a clear definition of service provision or by the service titles being too vague or too broad, both of which likely lead to discretion in interpreting survey questions and thus inconsistent answers by individual respondents over time.

Objectives In the past, research focusing on local service decisions was dominated by the exploration of make‐or‐buy choices (i.e., how to produce services). In this article, we extend this venue of research to explore service termination (i.e., whether to provide). In doing so, we adopt four theoretical strands developed in the fields of public policy and management to guide our research: policy termination, political economy, make‐or‐buy, and policy diffusion. Methods We utilize multiple International City/County Management Association surveys for our analysis. We supplement these data with information gleaned from a variety of other sources, including Census data, to construct a binary logistic regression model examining the determinants of service termination. Results We find that local governments are likely to terminate their services when they were previously outsourced to third‐party contractors rather than produced by their own employees. Further, our results indicate that locales tend to drop services more often when they are not commonly provided by peer jurisdictions, supporting the idea of diffusion. Conclusions Our findings suggest that, despite a dearth of research undertaken, service termination is surprisingly common and widespread across service areas.

Using four consecutive International City/County Management Association alternative service delivery arrangement surveys, this study explores the determinants of service shedding by local government in the United States. Our findings indicate that service shedding is fairly common, with almost 70% of jurisdictions experiencing at least one termination between 1992 and 1997. With regards to why jurisdictions shed services, we find that prior delivery mode is very influential. Specifically, services that were contracted out in the previous time period are much more likely to be dropped than are those that were produced in-house. We also find that the behavior of neighboring jurisdictions matters—if your neighbors tend to provide a service, you tend to continue to do so as well. We find little support for the idea that either budget stress or ideology is impactful in the decision to drop services.

The scholarship on contracting generally argues that markets for social services are weak and lacking in competition. Using data gathered from Florida’s largest social service agency, the Department of Children and Families, this article adds to the discussion by constructing a more rigorous measure of competition that accounts for the quality of bidding entities. The findings indicate that while the measures used in earlier studies align reasonably well with the raw number of initial responders to competitive solicitations, they tend to overestimate competition when the quality component is included in the analysis. That is, social service markets may be even weaker than previously reported. Furthermore, an examination of the relationship between competition and performance fails to find a significant association.

It is commonly posited that for-profit, nonprofit, and other government vendors have fundamental differences, which make one or the other the superior choice depending on the circumstances of service delivery. Past research, focusing on service and market characteristics, finds support for this proposition. In this article, we investigate not only the typical theoretical expectations regarding vendor traits, service characteristics, and market conditions associated with the sectors, but also the presumed trustworthiness and management practices that are argued to differentiate them in an effort to better understand the roles played by each in local government contracting. Our findings indicate that as expected, nonprofits are most commonly employed when dealing with hard to define, “soft” services with weak markets. However, contrary to expectations, nonprofits are not generally considered more trustworthy than for-profits and are not managed more “loosely” (i.e., more ambiguous contracts, more discretion exercised in sanctioning) than their for-profit peers. Rather, public vendors seem to be the most trusted and are managed less rigidly than contractors from the other sectors.