Moving Forward on Public Private Partnerships: U.S. and International Experience with PPP Units

By Emilia Istrate and Robert Puentes, Brookings Institution, December 2011. 

In a time of constrained public budgets, leveraging private-sector financial resources and expertise to deliver a range of infrastructure projects has growing appeal. However, these public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often complicated contracts that differ significantly from project to project and from place to place. In the United States, many states lack the technical capacity and expertise to consider such deals and fully protect the public interest. To address this problem, countries, states, and provinces around the world have created specialized institutional entities - called PPP units - to fulfill different functions such as quality control, policy formulation, and technical advice. 

This report recommends that U.S. states should:

• Establish dedicated PPP units to tackle bottlenecks in the PPP process and protect the public interest.
• Pass legislation and change the procurement culture to a more transparent and outcome- based project selection process.
• Work with the federal government to address technical assistance gaps on PPPs, on an as-needed basis.

For more information about PPP Units, visit PPP Units around the World. 

Tracking Number: Moving_Forward_on_PPPs_Brookings_EN.pdf

Istrate, Emilia, and Robert Puentes. 2011. “Moving Forward on Public Private Partnerships: U.S. and International Experience with PPP Units.” Project On State and Metropolitan Innovation. Washington, DC: Brookings-Rockefeller. [#1109]