The City of San Diego is committed to delivering quality services to taxpayers, residents, and visitors in the most economical and efficient means possible. This commitment can also be expressed as delivering services through "competitive government," defined as a government with processes in place to validate that service quality and costs are as good as, or superior to, any legitimate provider available.

Managed competition provides a structured, transparent process that allows an open and fair comparison of public sector employees and independent contractors in their ability to deliver services to our citizens. This strategy recognizes the high quality and potential of public sector employees, and seeks to tap their creativity, experience and resourcefulness by giving them the opportunity to structure organizations and processes in ways similar to best practices in competitive businesses. Functions that are performed by members of a Public Safety Retirement System are exempt from this procurement strategy.