The Lectern: Talking government-vendor partnerships

Blogger Steve Kelman wants to start a dialogue on the benefits, pitfalls and challenges that come with close collaboration between agencies and contractors:

I have written a few blog posts, and today a column, based on a case study I am doing on a British Ministry of Defence tri-service human resource program, called the joint personnel system. A close vendor-government partnership has characterized the development of the project, and the posts and the column have discussed why the partnership approach appeared -- the two-word answer: past performance -- and what benefits particularly the government derived from this kind of government-vendor relationship.

Because the idea of government-vendor partnership is now under a good deal of attack as some sort of synonym for government capitulation to rapacious contractors, I'd like to see if we can get a dialogue going on this blog on the benefits, pitfalls, challenges, and future of government-vendor partnerships in the IT and/or other contracting areas. Does a partnership approach benefit the government usually, sometimes, or seldom/never? If only sometimes, what are the pitfalls the government needs to watch out for? If there are benefits from a partnership approach, how can they best be achieved?

Contributions -- including comments on the posts of others -- to this discussion are welcome. I'd love to hear from government folks (with real names or not), industry and others outside government/industry. Even "Connie the Contractor" is welcome, though s/he is probably not really a contractor.

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