Public sector 334803 226104748 2008-07-16T21:04:04Z דוד שי 7192861 interwiki he {{Economic sectors}} The '''public sector''' is the part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the [[government]], whether national, [[regional]] or [[local]]/[[municipal]]. Examples of public sector activity range from delivering [[social security]], administering [[urban planning]] and organizing national [[defence (military)|defense]]s. The organization of the public sector ([[public ownership]]) can take several forms, including: *Direct administration funded through [[taxation]]; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet [[commerce|commercial]] success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government. *[[Corporatization|Publicly owned corporations]] (in some contexts, especially manufacturing, "[[state-owned enterprises]]"); which differ from direct administration in that they have greater commercial freedoms and are expected to operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by government (although goals may be set for them by government). *Partial [[outsourcing]] (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services), is considered a public sector model. A borderline form is *Complete [[outsourcing]] or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector. (See [[uk|Britain]]'s [[Private Finance Initiative]].) In spite of their name, [[public companies]] are not part of the public sector; they are a particular kind of [[private sector]] company that can offer their shares for sale to the general public. The decision about what are proper matters for the public sector as opposed to the private sector is probably the single most important dividing line among [[socialist]], [[liberal]], [[Conservatism|conservative]], and [[libertarian]] political philosophy, with (broadly) socialists preferring greater state involvement, [[libertarians]] favoring minimal state involvement, and conservatives and liberals favoring state involvement in some aspects of the society but not others. ==See also== * [[Government agency]] * [[Nonprofit sector]] * [[Private sector]] == References == *Lloyd G. Nigro, Decision Making in the Public Sector (1984), Marcel Dekker Inc . *David G. Carnevale, Organizational Development in the Public Sector (2002), Westview Pr. *Jan-Erik Lane, The Public Sector: Concepts, Models and Approaches (1995), Sage Pubns. *A Primer on Public-Private Partnerships http://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2008/02/a-primer-on-pub.html#more [[Category:Government]] [[Category:Public economics]] [[ar:قطاع عام]] [[da:Offentlig sektor]] [[el:Δημόσιος τομέας]] [[et:Avalik sektor]] [[es:Sector público]] [[fr:Secteur public]] [[he:המגזר הציבורי]] [[hi:सार्वजनिक प्रतिष्ठान]] [[nl:Publieke sector]] [[no:Offentlig sektor]] [[pt:Economia do Setor Público]] [[simple:Public sector]] [[fi:Julkinen sektori]] [[sv:Offentlig sektor]]