A purchasing strategy adopted by the private sector three decades ago, called category management, organizes the spending on common goods and services across the enterprise into defined categories, such as travel or commercial software, from the same or similar supplier base.
This report examines the story of a hardy group of civil servants who are moving away from stodgy, stovepiped, red-tape-ridden bureaucracies to create new business that are in some cases good enough to beat private companies competing for government contracts. These programs -an amalgam of franchise operations, revolving fund reimbursable services, multi-agency contract operators and fee-based service providers- offer lessons for a government determined to run with the efficiency and effectiveness of business. Innovation
