Improving public service delivery through outsourcing: emerging experiences from Tanzania

This study investigates the improvement in efficiency of service delivery with regards to outsourced public services. The thrust of the study is to examine impacts of outsourcing public activities and what are the sources of scale efficiency. A non experimental cross sectional research design has been used to conduct the study. The objectives of the study are one, to examine the accessibility of the outsourced public services, two, to discover the financial cost savings made and three, to investigate the extent of customer satisfaction. Theoretical framework provides for the underpinnings of the old public administration and how it evolved to the New Public Management. The main empirical findings of the research suggest general uncertainties and exaggerations in realizing savings of outsourcing in Tanzania. The study reveals that financial effectiveness was realized at the expense of budgetary reimbursements and redundancy. Services of reasonable or high quality are still inaccessible because of higher prices. Service users agree that outsourced activities got marginally added speed of delivery, but there were no mechanisms for measuring the speed. Quality compromise and insecurity of public finance and property is one of the characteristic features with the permission of the operation of private security companies. It is recommended that open performance review and appraisal system be applied to evaluate the efficiency of the outsourced public services; outsourcing policy needs to inculcating conditions for contestable environment; the Tanzania government should initiate contract changes to contain widespread corruption in the public sector; and to revise the job loses with outsourcing for a policy of “redeployment and rehire”.