Paulina Kubera

More public authorities nowadays engage specialised undertakings to perform public services. This raises questions on the applicable rules to the selection of public service providers as well as their remuneration for public service delivery. The paper discusses the models of providing urban public transport services in the EU and in Poland and the consequences of adopting ones in the context of the EU common market, in particular resulting from the public procurement and state aid rules. The very common model in Polish cities which consists of the co-existence of the Public Transport Authorities (the organisers of local public transport) and the operators (carriers) who are budgetary establishments or publicly-owned commercial companies, where ‘the internal provider exception’ under public procurement rules is applicable, the compliance of the public services financing with state aid rules remains to be challenging for public authorities.

Organisations which receive external funding have been strongly infl uenced by the call to increase accountability, from one hand, and desire to enhance organisational learning on the other. It has been traditionally argued that tensions and trade-offs between these two are inevitable. However, this article demonstrates that it should not necessarily be the case. By reviewing how accountability and organisational learning is defined, and taking account of the recent advancements in evaluation theory and practice, the article explores the ways in which accountability and learning purposes can be reconciled in one evaluation endeavour. It links different types of accountability with different types (loops) of learning. The main argument put forward is that in today’s complex and dynamic environment with many unexpected twists of events being caused by multiple variables a broader view of accountability coupled with higher level of organisational learning is needed. This is especially true in reference to innovative public interventions aimed at multidimensional social problems such as sustainable development or poverty alleviation.