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The public sector is the part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government
Government

Government is the body within any organization that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws, regulations, or rules. Typically, the government refers to a civil government -- local, provincial, or national -- but commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also administered by governing bodies....
, whether national, regional
Régional

R?gional Compagnie A?rienne Europ?enne, or R?gional for short, is a subsidiary airline wholly owned by Air France which connects hubs at Paris, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, and Bordeaux to 49 airports in Europe....
 or local
Local

Local generally means that which relates to a specific area or place, and is not vast or widespread.Local may also refer to:In medicine:...
/municipal.

Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security
Social security

Social security primarily refers to a social insurance program providing social protection, or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others....
, administering urban planning
Urban planning

Urban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning, to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities....
 and organising national defenses.

The organization of the public sector (public ownership
Public ownership

Public ownership refers to government ownership of any asset, industry, or corporation at any level, national government, regional government or local government ; or, it may refer to common non-state ownership....
) can take several forms, including:



A borderline form is






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The public sector is the part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government
Government

Government is the body within any organization that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws, regulations, or rules. Typically, the government refers to a civil government -- local, provincial, or national -- but commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also administered by governing bodies....
, whether national, regional
Régional

R?gional Compagnie A?rienne Europ?enne, or R?gional for short, is a subsidiary airline wholly owned by Air France which connects hubs at Paris, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, and Bordeaux to 49 airports in Europe....
 or local
Local

Local generally means that which relates to a specific area or place, and is not vast or widespread.Local may also refer to:In medicine:...
/municipal.

Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security
Social security

Social security primarily refers to a social insurance program providing social protection, or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others....
, administering urban planning
Urban planning

Urban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning, to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities....
 and organising national defenses.

The organization of the public sector (public ownership
Public ownership

Public ownership refers to government ownership of any asset, industry, or corporation at any level, national government, regional government or local government ; or, it may refer to common non-state ownership....
) can take several forms, including:

  • Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial
    Commerce

    Commerce is a division of trade or production, costs, and pricing which deals with the Trade of goods and service from production, costs, and pricing to final consumer....
     success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government.
  • Publicly owned corporations
    Corporatization

    Corporatization is a more precise term for what often is called privatization, which almost always refers to a process by which formerly public assets or functions are sold or given to corporate entities....
     (in some contexts, especially manufacturing, "state-owned enterprises"); which differ from direct administration in that they have greater commercial freedoms and are expected to operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by government (although goals may be set for them by government).
  • Partial outsourcing
    Outsourcing

    Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the core competence of a particular business, or to make more efficient...
     (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services), is considered a public sector model.


A borderline form is
  • Complete outsourcing
    Outsourcing

    Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the core competence of a particular business, or to make more efficient...
     or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector. (See Britain's Private Finance Initiative
    Private Finance Initiative

    The Private Finance Initiative is a controversial method, developed initially by the United Kingdom government, to provide financial support for 'public-private partnerships' between the public sector and private sectors....
    .)


In spite of their name, public companies are not part of the public sector; they are a particular kind of private sector
Private sector

In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy which is both run for private profit and is not controlled by the state. By contrast, enterprises that are part of the state are part of the public sector; private, non-profit organizations are regarded as part of the voluntary sector....
 company that can offer their shares for sale to the general public.

The decision about what are proper matters for the public sector as opposed to the private sector is probably the single most important dividing line among socialist, liberal
Liberalism

Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophy that considers individualism liberty and equality to be the most important political goals....
, conservative
Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social term whose meaning has changed in different countries and time periods, but which usually indicates support for the status quo or the status quo ante....
, and libertarian political philosophy, with (broadly) socialists preferring greater state involvement, libertarians favoring minimal state involvement, and conservatives and liberals favoring state involvement in some aspects of the society but not others.

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