In an Op-Ed piece for the February 21, 2005 issue of The New York Times, Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers argue that the critical question with respect to the delivery of public services is “how the sectors, including nonprofit groups, should be arrayed and managed to produce the best services.”  The current problem is that “most public officials don’t know how to efficiently manage a government that does most of its work through third parties.”  The authors assert that the answer is for government to recognize that “holding providers accountable and measuring and tracking their performance has to become a core government responsibility that is as important, if not more so, than managing public employees.”  They call this model “governance by network.”