Abstract
Governments in many countries are gradually adjusting their traditional concepts and committing private businesses to conducting governmental business and services in order to achieve economic and operational goals and to introduce more dynamic technologies from private organisations for better financial flexibility. With a freely competitive mechanism in private markets, the quality and efficiency of public services could be effectively promoted in order to enhance economic benefits. Using data from garbage clean-up outsourcing in various districts under the 2008-2010Environmental Protection Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist Productivity Analysis were combined to measure the total efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PTE), and scale efficiency (SE) of the garbage clean-up services in 11 districts in Kaohsiung City to provide follow-up information on the garbage clean-up outsourcing initiative of the Environmental Protection Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government. The empirical results for overall efficiency show that optimal total efficiency was reported in the Hsin-hsing District (0.99), optimal pure technical efficiency in the Hsin-hsing District (0.99), and optimal scale efficiency in the San-min District (1.00).
Highlights
With economic development and the enhancement of economic awareness, the desire of the public is to see that the service provided by the government is multifaceted in scope and quality
According to a survey carried out by the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs, about 40 per cent of garbage clean-up is outsourced to the commercial sector and the expenses are merely one-third of the expenses when this function is managed by the public sector
When the number of employees and costs were deleted, the number of relatively efficient decision-making units (DMUs) was reduced, which reflects the importance of these two variables in that they are able to affect the relative efficiency evaluated by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)
Summary
With economic development and the enhancement of economic awareness, the desire of the public is to see that the service provided by the government is multifaceted in scope and quality. One of the facets of this service is dealing with the garbage clean-up problem (closely related to public living). There have been numerous instances in Western countries and Japan where garbage clean-up outsourcing is practiced to simplify government functions, saving personnel expenses and enhancing service quality and efficiency. The enhancement of environmental awareness has meant that public requirements in respect of the scope and quality of government services have increased, resulting in an expansion of executive and operational manpower, high personnel expenses and social and public comments. In addition to the restrictions imposed by the downsizing policy and the shortage of financial resources, Kaohsiung City Government faces the dilemma of increasing environmental work.
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