「問題廠商」還是「問題政府」？電子化政府公私合夥協力困境之個案分析

Abstract

在政府財政資源有限而民眾需求卻有增無減的年代，政府透過與民間組織合作共同生產財貨或提供服務，可謂是解決此一困境的策略手段，協力治理也因此成為當前公共管理的顯學。不過，一般公私合夥或契約管理文獻偏好站在「政府中心」立場，探討如何有效減低事前簽約與事後順服成本，其清楚點出了「廠商對政府所構成的交易成本」是夥伴關係不成功之歸因，卻鮮少有研究意識到「政府對廠商所構成的交易成本」同樣可能是協力失靈之關鍵，彷彿這類失靈來源絕大部分乃出自於「問題廠商」而非「問題政府」；縱使某種程度承認「問題政府」之存在，也是偏重在政府契約管理能力不足之討論，至於能力以外的深層障礙往往不是關懷重點。然而，公私合夥畢竟不同於傳統外包模式的運作邏輯，而是須以「雙贏」作為努力目標，從這個角度出發，顯然唯有同時降低彼此雙方的協力成本，方有助於創造良好的治理績效，這也是相關文獻普遍著墨較少的地方。\\r本研究主要論點是：無論是「廠商對政府構成的交易成本」或「政府對廠商構成的交易成本」，兩者在影響協力結果的研究問題上皆應等量齊觀。基此，本文透過「臺北市民生活網公私合營專案」的個案研究，探究後者亦即政府對廠商構成的交易成本，如何對協力結果造成不良影響。研究發現顯示，資訊廠商執行任務所牽涉的種種問題構成其可觀的交易成本，此並可進一步概念化為「政治上交易成本」（如民選行政首長更替、機關首長更替等）與「行政上交易成本」（如業務移轉、機關地盤、機關與既有後端廠商的封閉式合約關係，以及地方政府管轄權等）。據此而論，在日後公私合夥政策實務上，政府作為公私合夥的發動者，同時握有較多行政經驗與資訊優勢，不僅應作好政府中心的評估，還應設法將廠商潛在交易成本納入考量並妥善處理，如此才有助於這類協力專案的永續發展。

In an age of state fiscal constraints and citizens’ growing demands, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are one of the strategies to cope with the challenges, and hence collaborative governance recently has become a popular theme in public management. However, most scholars in the field of PPPs and public contract management tend to discuss the issue of how to effectively reduce those costs such as ex-ante writing and implementing costs and ex-post compliance costs of contract from “the government-centered” viewpoint. Based upon this viewpoint, many of us can see that the transaction costs posed by the firm commonly be used to explain why the partnership is unsuccessful, but entirely neglect the possibility that the transaction costs posed by the government agencies might also seriously cause the partnership failure. Also, it clearly presumes that the firm rather than the government agency is a trouble maker. Even those, who recognize that the government agencies are the roots of partnership failure, incline to proportionately concentrate on the issue of the capability of public contract management, while they, to some degree, still neglect other deepening and structural obstacles. As we know, however, the logic of the PPPs are totally different to that of the outsourcing. Accordingly, the idea of how to strive to achieve the “win-win” goal by means of minimizing collaborative costs on both sides may deserve our attention very much, which can also provide a concrete rationale for the study of successful PPPs. The author argues that the transaction costs posed by the firm or by the government agencies should pay equal attention when we are carrying on the related researches. Thus, the author tries to inquire the phenomenon of how the transaction costs posed by the government sector might affect the project failure too through the case study of “My Taipei Website PPPs Project”. The findings indicate that the partnership failure apparently results from two types of transaction costs posed by the government agencies, and each of them separately occurs on the level of politics and administration in the public bureaucracy. Specifically, the former mainly refers to the leadership turnover, and the latter contains the several factors such as tasks shift, administrative coordination, the third-party conflicts, local government jurisdictions and so on. Therefore, to enhance the performance and sustainability of PPPs projects, not only the transaction costs posed by the private sector should be evaluated, but the transaction costs posed by the public sector itself should also be considered and even managed well.