Resultatkontruer

Resultatkontruer, commonly used in Norwegian and Danish procurement discourse, are contracts in which payment and terms are tied to the achievement of predefined results or outcomes, rather than the delivery of specific activities or inputs. They are a form of performance-based contracting used in public and some private sector contexts.

A typical resultatkontrakt specifies measurable outcomes, such as service levels, quality indicators, availability, or user outcomes. It includes targets, baseline data, verification methods, and a payment mechanism that triggers when results meet or exceed the criteria. Risk is shifted toward the contractor, who bears partial or full responsibility for gaps in performance, while the buyer retains governance and oversight roles.

Common sectors include public health and social services, education, infrastructure, facility management, and IT services. Resultatkontruer can cover shorter-term targets or long-term outcomes, with adjustments for factors outside the contractor's control, such as demographic changes or weather.

Advantages include better alignment of incentives with user outcomes, potential efficiency gains, and more predictable public costs when performance is guaranteed. They can spur innovation as contractors seek new methods to achieve results.

Challenges include designing robust, verifiable metrics that reflect meaningful outcomes; ensuring data quality and transparency; managing gaming or unintended consequence where providers optimize for the metric rather than the goal; and the administrative complexity of monitoring and verification.

Implementation typically starts with careful scoping, risk sharing arrangements, pilot projects, independent evaluation, and clear dispute and revision mechanisms to adapt targets as conditions change.