Scope and diversity of privatized services in the North Central Division

Privatization is the purchase of goods and services from the private sector by governmental agencies. We conducted a survey to gather information on t he current status of privatization in state, provincial, and federal agenci es within the North Central Division of the American Fisheries Society. Mos t respondents indicated their agencies did contract services and likely wou ld continue to do so in the future because of budget or personnel constrain ts. Certain activities such as fish production, specialized research, secon dary data collection, engineering, computer programming, data entry, creel surveys, fish removal, and inventory activities were most likely to be cont racted. However, activities closely related to the central mission (e.g., s tandardized sampling, data analysis) or the final decision-making process o f the agency were less likely to be contracted. A consensus among administr ators was that wide-scale privatization of management activities is counter to the long-term conservation of fisheries resources.