Active Contract Management: How Governments Can Collaborate More Effectively with Social Service Providers to Achieve Better Results

Introduction

Many critical functions of government social service agencies involve contracting with private service providers. Increasing the effectiveness of procurements is therefore essential to improving governments’ ability to deliver social services. Often government agencies assume that their role is complete once a contract is signed and shift to a narrow focus on processing invoices and enforcing compliance. However, some of the most important work for government comes during the course of the contract, when real-time improvements to service delivery can drive better outcomes for the people being served. Agencies should use procurement and contracting to establish the foundation for an ongoing collaboration with contracted service providers to strategically improve performance.  

Active contract management (ACM) is a set of strategies developed by the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) in partnership with government clients that apply high-frequency use of data and purposeful management of agency-service provider interactions to improve outcomes from contracted services. We have seen these strategies adopted by agencies responsible for child welfare, workforce development, prisoner re-entry, developmental disabilities, and addiction treatment.  

Like PerformanceStat, ACM consists of high-frequency, data-informed meetings designed to produce action that improves performance. Where PerformanceStat is often implemented in order to improve core government functions, ACM focuses on collaborations between government agencies and social service providers to improve contracted services. ACM empowers leaders to detect and rapidly respond to problems, make consistent improvements to performance, and identify opportunities for reengineering service delivery systems.  

This policy brief describes the problems that ACM aims to solve, discusses the benefits of using these strategies, and outlines elements of effective ACM systems. Examples in this brief draw primarily on the GPL’s engagements piloting ACM strategies with state and local governments across the country. While this brief is focused on how ACM can drive social outcomes, we have seen these same strategies improve results of other government contracts, including for waste collection and road construction. 

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