Measuring the value of public-private partnerships. It’s the key to drawing in new partners.

Problem:

A major federal agency’s public-private partnership office needed to understand when and how a partnership approach improved its performance results, and how to increase the number and quality of alliances it pursued in the developing world. So the agency turned to Mission Measurement to find a way to communicate the value of public-private partnerships to potential business investors and partners, and Agency staff

Solution:

We began by designing an approach to engage key stakeholders, including representatives from the within the agency, the private sector and implementers of the agency’s programs, in order to identify the goals they want to achieve from a public-private partnership. We also executed research to determine the types of outcomes that these partnerships could realistically produce.

Our consultants then worked alongside the agency’s team to derive a set of overlapping or common outcomes that were shared by the public and private sector and represented the business and development outcomes that stakeholders valued.

Results:

• The federal agency, with support from Mission Measurement, integrated these shared outcomes and metrics into a simplified tool for agency staff to use to better identify high value public-private partnerships and clearly articulate the value created by these partnerships.
• Agency staff have also integrated these shared outcome and metrics into their internal management tools, including their work plans, and now have a better understanding of how to prioritize and build the types of partnerships that can improve their development results.