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Public-Private Partnerships in Municipal Wi-Fi: Optimising Public Value

Public-private partnerships (PPP) are the dominant business model for procuring and operating public digital communication networks such as public Wi-Fi and IoT, technologies that play a significant role in providing public internet access and managing urban systems. The literature on partnerships in public infrastructure provision gives much attention to risk in such arrangements, and is largely sceptical of the capacity of public authorities to transfer risk to the private sector. In the limited critical discussion of PPPs or similar arrangements in the field of communications infrastructure, technological capture or lock-in of city governments investing in digital communications networks is hypothesised as a risk factor. In this paper I draw on field research to investigate this hypothesis by analysing risk factors associated with PPP models in the provision of municipal-level public Wi-Fi. Focussing on Australian examples, I argue that the limited expertise and resources of local government authorities (LGAs), along with the regulatory complexity of telecommunications, weigh against direct LGA provision of public Wi-Fi and in favour of partnership arrangements. However, I highlight two concerns associated with PPP models of public Wi-Fi provision: 1) the lack of transparency and accountability relating to digital infrastructure procurement and service evaluation imposed by commercial-in-confidence claims, and 2) the limited attention of LGAs to questions of data access when contracting private providers, subsequently limiting their capacity to obtain and use network metadata for public good purposes. Drawing on the work of Mark H Moore, I frame these concerns as strategic management challenges. Moore's analysis of these challenges through his strategic triangle model assists in optimising the public value of PPP arrangements in the domain of digital infrastructure. While I focus on PWF networks, the discussion has wider relevance for e-governance.