A Multi-Criteria Model to Evaluate Public Services Contracts

A major trend to improve Public Administration has been the increase of contracting out services hoping to achieve better levels of performance. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of this approach implies the application of appropriate models to evaluate such performance This is why a multi-criteria model was developed by the authors to evaluate and to improve the performance of public services contracts focusing on four key dimensions: the process of contract formation, the contract costs, the benefits achieved by the contract execution and its impacts. The proposed model provides a stable, consistent and integrated framework allowing not just the evaluation of contracts but also the identification of the priorities for improvement. A successful application to the evaluation of Home Respiratory Services is also presented.