especially ensuring the needs of the organizations for capital and the decrease of public spending. (Salminen & Viinamäki 2001: 21, 34-35, Lähdesmäki 2003: 147, 218-220; OECD 2003: 110–111.)
It has become more and more acceptable to provide services in the market. Contracting out means that the public authorities still retain responsibility for seeing that the service is provided, and still pay for it and set the standards and requirements for it, but the actual work of delivering the service is undertaken, on contract, by some other organization. Contracting refers to the design and implementation of contractual relationships between purchasers and suppliers. (Domberger 1998: 12.) In recent years there has been a growth of contracting out services also in Finland.