Building shared accountability into service transformation partnerships

Governments at all levels in Canada have entered into partnerships with the industry to effect user-focused, cross-agency service integration and multichannel service delivery. This article examines the problem of developing shared accountability mechanisms for public-private service transformation partnerships, which satisfy the demands of new business relationships and traditional democratic governance values. It first explores the widening canvas of collaborative information technology-driven partnerships and then draws on the emerging shared accountability literature and practices to set out five conditions which should be met in the establishment of a shared accountability regime for such partnerships. These criteria statements are used to analyse the accountability provisions of a new partnership between Service BC (the lead service delivery entity for the British Columbia government) and a consortium led by IBM Canada. The most significant shortcoming would appear to be its very limited public dimension. The article ends with a discussion of how that problem might be addressed.