What is Collaborative Governance?

At its simplest, "collaborative governance" refers to the joining together of public (government) and private (business, nonprofit) players to address particular problems.  That, of course, is a rather broad definition, and only a subset of public/private arrangements can be considered to employ "colgov".  

Central to collaboration in this sense is the idea of "shared discretion."  Historically, government defined the requirements, wrote the specs, and cut the checks to private sector groups who did the grunt work.  In colgov arrangements, the private players make substantial contributions to all four stages.  The goals are cooperatively defined and agreed upon, and metrics for measuring success similarly declared.  But the private groups are given wide latitude in how to achieve those goals, and in the day-to-day management of the work. 

Charter schools highlight this distinction well.  Students in such schools are in most cases expected to meet the same standards for academic achievement as those in the regular public school system (typically measured, for better or worse, through performance on standardized tests), and to cover the same core curriculum.  But charter schools have broad discretion in teaching methods, school administration, and other areas that allow ambitious new models to be developed.  This, of course, serves the students in these schools well; but it is also pointing the way to more generalized ideas that can be applied elsewhere.

Thus, a second common component of colgov is the idea of governance enhancement, harnassing private sector energy, expertise and ambition, and replicating it beyond the immediate case.

There are many other aspects to colgov, and I invite others to add comments here and post elsewhere on this site to share their own thoughts and insight to this exciting 21st century venture.