Newsletter 3 - 15 September 2018
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| Newsletter n° 3 - {15 September 2018} | ||
This month EAPPP’s newsletter is focused on sharing with you some of the latest contributions on public-private partnership, published in volumes that offer interesting inputs on this topic. Also, we are proud to circulate a contribution from our Founding Member Prof. Raquel Carvalho, which provides an interesting insight on the Portuguese Court of Auditors’ Report on "Public Private Partnership Health Programme in Portugal”. The research on partnership is constantly expanding! We would like to remind you that EAPPP is always available to support or promote researches for topics of common interest. Therefore, we welcome any suggestion regarding publications, volumes or articles. Enjoy the reading! |
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WHAT'S NEW IN PUBLISHING |
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 Public procurement in the European Union represents almost twelve per cent of the EU's GDP and is continuing to increase, having been identified as a key objective in the EU's aim to become the most competitive economy in the world by 2010. The book provides a multi-disciplinary approach to public procurement and will be of use to academics and policy-makers. Providing its readers with practical description and analysis of the relevant policies, law and jurisprudence, the book also explores possible future trends in public procurement regulation. M. Chon - P. Roffe - A. Abdel-Latif (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Public-Private Partnerships, Intellectual Property, Governance and Sustainable Development, Cambridge, 2018  Public–private partnerships (PPPs) play an increasingly prominent role in addressing global development challenges. United Nations agencies and other organizations are relying on PPPs to improve global health, facilitate access to scientific information, and encourage the diffusion of climate change technologies. For this reason, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights their centrality in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, the intellectual property dimensions and implications of these efforts remain under-examined. Through selective case studies, the book contributes to a better understanding of the relationships between PPPs and intellectual property considered within a global knowledge governance framework. N. Meletiadis, Public Private Partnerships and Constitutional Law. Accountability in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, Abingdon, 2018  Annually, the government commits significant expenditure to a type of public contracts which are known as Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) or the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). These contracts bind the public purse for decades in sectors such as Health, Defence and Detention, and involve the assignment of a significant role to the private sector in the provision of public services. This book explores the controversial subject of the public accountability of these contracts, and the corresponding large sums of public money involved. It explains how public accountability works for PPPs and the PFI, and it argues that it should be provided as part of the Economic Constitution. Drawing comparative understandings from the UK and the USA constitutional legal traditions, the book investigates public accountability from the perspective of the Economic Constitution, focusing on three accountability criteria - legal, accounting and administrative. In doing so, it provides an analysis which informs both from the perspective of academic research and from that of legal and consulting practice. N. Mouraviev - N. Kakabadse (eds.), Public-Private Partnerships in Transitional Nations. Policy, Governance and Praxis, Cambridge, 2017  This collection examines public-private partnerships (PPPs) in transitional nations from the governance perspective. It explores the structures, legal frameworks and collaborative arrangements that underpin partnerships in Europe, Asia and Africa, and highlights government decisions that facilitate the transformation of societal challenges into developmental opportunities. By sharing the experience of nine nations, including China, Indonesia, Russia and Nigeria, it helps to better understand the commonalities in PPP deployment, avoid mistakes and pitfalls, and learn from other economies. The book raises the critical questions that concern many governments, including: What are the common and frequent mistakes that governments make when they deploy partnerships and deal with governance issues? How can countries increase PPPs’ benefits? Can PPPs be instrumental in accomplishing certain less traditional government tasks, such as disaster risk management of built infrastructure and promotion of clean energy? Can PPPs serve as a backbone of entrepreneurial networks and contribute to sustainable development? The groundwork is laid out for contrasting and comparing successful and unsuccessful government actions, institutional, legal and financing initiatives and procedures, allowing one to make cross-country and cross-sectoral comparisons. |
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Public Private Partnership Health Programme in Portugal – Court of Auditors’ Report of 2008 |
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Public Private Partnership Health Programme in Portugal – Court of Auditors’ Report of 2008 – Report no. 15/2009 AUDIT[1] Raquel Carvalho[2] Considering the importance of the negative consequences of budget overruns in the PPP Health Program, in April 2008 the Court of Auditors, within the scope of its statutory audit powers, decided to carry out an analysis regarding the management of a set of hospitals (Loures, Cascais, Braga and Vila Franca de Xira) which became to be known as “the first-wave experience”. The aim was to "identify and characterize the facts that gave rise to delays in the procurement processes of these PPPs" (page 5)[1]. Firstly, data was collected both from information already in possession of the Court and the one that resulted from the audit. Several bodies of the Health Administration (Ministry of Health and depending services), as well as of the Health Regulator were involved. Experts were also consulted within the audit period, ranging from April to October 2008. The procedure had the contribution of the audited hospitals and a final report was produced. From the executive summary of his report, the following stands out: a) the contracting process was very time-consuming, and after 5 years the procedure was not finished yet – procedural inefficiency; b) a possible explanation for this inefficiency seems to be linked to a partnership model which, besides being very complex, had not been tried before at the time; in addition, there was no sectorial planning, and strategic instruments also lacked c) to launch a pilot project was not an option, but rather the simultaneous launch of 2/3 projects/year; d) the proposal evaluation phase slipped from 160% to 360% in terms of deadline; e) inefficiency was also visible concerning the lack of clarity of the different procedure parts, showing weaknesses previously detected; i.e., a weak project pipeline management f) the final negotiation also proved to be a time-consuming and problematic phase; g) all weaknesses led the State to change the PPP model, withdrawing the clinical management even before the execution of the initial contracts. The model was based on the "substantial risk" feature, and the contract included two distinct objects: clinical management and infrastructure construction. This model was later abandoned, also given the absence of international experiences that could have facilitated its implementation. The Court of Auditors emphasized the experimentalist nature of the option underlying the PPP, which proved to be fragile and justified the slippage that occurred. A common aspect of this first wave-experience is in fact the slippage of deadlines both in the launching of the procedures and in their completion, with significant budgetary implications. The option of successively launching procedures "eventually conditioned" their success (p. 12) The Court identified several fragilities: the lack of both a prior diagnosis and planning; the rigidity of the procedure documents; lack of clarity regarding the procedures; procedure complexity; management inadequacy of the available resources. The successive launch of such procedures had several damaging consequences, one of the most relevant being the lack of coherence of the project. However, corrective measures were instituted since 2007: "The promotion of direct intervention by the Regional Health Administrations, from the beginning of the insolvency proceedings, through the participation of those entities in the commissions of evaluation of proposals; The simplification of the requirements of the specifications, by changing the detail of the building projects, at the stage of proposals, namely at the level of special installations (mechanical, electrical, water and sewage, foundations and structures, among others) of control of processes, by Central Administration bodies, in order to ensure compliance with the policy and regulations of the Ministry of Health; The strengthening of the technical staff of EMPS, in order to give that entity greater power of action to intervene and control their procedures; The hiring of new consulting firms, especially for the procedures of the second wave of PPP Health, in order to strengthen and diversify responsiveness, especially for new tenders; The development of a new insolvency model, to be applied specifically to new insolvency proceedings, without the clinical management component, which will aim at ensuring greater efficiency and economy of procedures, simplifying procedures, reducing overall deadlines and high transaction costs for the competitors and the State "(p.15). Two major recommendations were made: "When implementing Public-Private Partnerships, within the scope of Public Administration Sectors with less experience in this type of hiring, the formal and participatory diagnosis and planning of the implementation capacities of the various sectoral bodies is to be involved taking into account their respective functions, as well as the need for their articulation throughout the public management cycle associated with PPPs. In the cases referred above, when implementing either PPP models of an innovative nature and of a particular degree of complexity, or untested hiring procedures, PPP projects should preferably start with the implementation of a pilot project (p. 20). In conclusion, by 2009, only one procedure was concluded, another was canceled and another one was terminated and started again but with a less competitive feature. Hence, there was a negative impact in the market due to this context, but there was also some positive impacts as well. The second PPP experience benefited both from the change of procedures and from the previous experience, and it was decided to implement a different kind of PPP procedure model. [1]Accessible at: https://www.tcontas.pt/pt/actos/rel_auditoria/2009/2s/audit-dgtc-rel015-2009-2s.pdf (Portuguese version). The text is based on the Report.
[2] Associate Professor. Universidade Católica Portuguesa, CEID - Centro de Estudos e Investigação em Direito, Faculdade de Direito – Escola do Porto, Rua Diogo Botelho, 1327, 4169-005, Porto, Portugal. Founding member of EAPPP Associationhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8929-7936 http://www.degois.pt/visualizador/curriculum.jsp?key=1835750954787292 For correspondence: rmcarvalho@porto.ucp.pt. [3] The procedure used was based on the Audit and Procedures Manual of the Court. Please access information at https://www.tcontas.pt/pt/publicacoes/manuais_publicacoes.shtm (Portuguese version). For the English version of the Portuguese Court of Auditors web page, please access https://www.tcontas.pt/en/english.shtm |
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EAPPP - EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP piazza E. Duse 1, Milano - info@eappp.com - www.eappp.com |
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