A popular practice in the 1990’s is creating a commission to examine privatization, set guidelines and procedures, recommend legislation to induce or encourage privatization, or actually supervise the privatization process that has been legislated. Frequently these commissions are a panel composed of legislators from both parties, representatives of the executive, and members representing public employee unions and the business community.
The commissions often produce little more than reports that are largely ignored by legislators. Sometimes, however, the commissions are very effective (the outstanding example being Virginia’s Commonwealth Competition Council). In Privatization: Lessons Learned by State and Local Governments, GAO reports that the most successful privatization programs included some sort of specialized unit to institutionalize the specialized knowledge needed to carry out privatization, provide day-to-day oversight of agency implementation of relevant policies, and measure outcomes and recommend modifications.