inss.dodlive.mil DH No. 78 1
P
ublic-public and public-private and partnerships (P4s) are time-proven
eective solutions for delivering public services at reasonable costs when
deployed and managed properly. Various U.S. agencies
1
and internation-
al organizations all have longstanding successful P4 initiatives and projects. Re-
cently, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders have expressed increased interest
in implementing P4s throughout their organizations.
2
As DOD is faced with
evolving roles and missions in an “unpredictable and complex world amid scal
constraints, the expertise and involvement of the private sector and other public
organizations will be essential.”
3
P4s could be ideal tools intended to “further
policy objectives, enhance U.S. operational capabilities, reduce costs, gain access
to nonmilitary expertise or assets, or build greater capacity in partners.”
4
While the need for P4s is fairly well articulated, there are still serious
hurdles to their implementation, with a general lack of explicit guidance, best
practices, and frameworks for implementing P4s consistently, optimally, or at an
enterprise level within and across DOD. P4s can be extremely diverse from one
another in terms of formality, structure, objective, complexity, stakeholders, and
scope of activity—elements that make enterprise-level consistency dicult. is
leaves P4 practitioners and organizations in a unique situation, one in which
creativity, collaboration, and alternate approaches are expressly encouraged to
achieve a variety of project objectives, while bound by legal, political, mission,
and nancial frameworks that have not yet been established, approved, or tested
on an enterprise scale.
While P4 is not a new concept, it has never received as much attention
as it does today as a tool or technique to accomplish DOD missions. More
Defense Partnerships:
Documenting Trends and
Emerging Topics for Action
by Samuel Bendett
Defense Horizons
National Defense University
CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
About the Author
Samuel Bendett is an Assistant
Research Fellow in the Center for
Technology and National Security
Policy, Institute for National Strategic
Studies, at the National Defense
University.
Key Points
Further integration along with a
shared forum for common proce-
dures, roadblocks, and solution
sets will help inform and address
public-private, public-public (P4)
functional stovepiping and special-
ized P4 success in the Department
of Defense (DOD).
There is a need for formal capture
of enterprise-wide best practices
and lessons observed.
DOD personnel have signicant
training and competency in their
specic career eld, but there ap-
pears to be a need to either inte-
grate or identify P4 subspecialties
to develop P4 through the ranks.
Cross-Service collaboration and in-
teragency planning, tiger-teaming,
and convening non-DOD stake-
holders with DOD counterparts
will support P4s both at a project
level and an enterprise level.
March 2015
