Understanding new models of collaboration for delivering government services

Reviewer: Charalampos Karagiannidis

An interesting topic is addressed in this paper: "themes that cut across the different case types and national boundaries," with respect to efforts to deliver government services through new working relationships between government, private, and non-profit organizations. The results will be of interest to anyone working on the delivery of government services. The principal shortcoming of the paper is that due to limited space, it does not include much in the way of detail about the results themselves, or about the approach adopted. In view of this, it would have been helpful if the authors had provided some additional references. As noted above, the first element lacking in the paper is detail regarding the results. For example, the authors' first conclusion states that "each collaboration rests on an understood (but often tacit) working philosophy." Specific examples of these philosophies would be of great interest to the general reader. Also, aside from the "common" themes that emerged from this study, there is no mention of the main differences between this study and others, or the reasons behind them. More detail concerning the approach used would enable other researchers worldwide to adopt similar approaches, and to compare their results to the results of the presented study. Finally, it would be interesting if more European cases were addressed. Online Computing Reviews Service