Co-Production of Public Services and Outcomes

Elke Loeffler

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030555085
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030555092
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines user and community co-production of public services and outcomes, currently one of the most discussed topics in the field of public management and policy. It considers co-production in a wide range of public services, with particular emphasis on health, social care and community safety, illustrated through international case studies in many of the chapters. This book draws on both quantitative and qualitative empirical research studies on co-production, and on the Governance International database of more than 70 international co-production case studies, most of which have been republished by the OECD. Academically rigorous and systematically evidence-based, the book incorporates many insights which have arisen from the extensive range of research projects and executive training programmes in co-production undertaken by the author. Written in a style which is easy and enjoyable to read, the book gives readers, both academics and practitioners, the opportunityto develop a creative understanding of the essence and implications of co-production.                                  

© The Author(s) 2021

E. LoefflerCo-Production of Public Services and Outcomeshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55509-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Why Co-producing Public Services and Public Outcomes with Citizens Is Timely

Elke Loeffler¹

(1)

Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Elke Loeffler

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

User and community co-production has experienced renewed interest internationally in both academia and practice since the early 2000s, after its original short burst of prominence in the US around the 1980s. In the words of John Alford (2009, 4), “co-production is (back) in fashion”.

This has been accompanied by an exponential growth of publications on all aspects of co-production. Furthermore, the term co-production is increasingly used by a wide range of stakeholders in the policy community and public services—perhaps most obviously in countries such as the UK and Netherlands, but also in many other parts of the world (although rather less in Germany, France and the USA). Many governments have published reports on the potential of co-production, while the European Union has funded a considerable number of co-production research projects within its Horizon 2020 programme and other initiatives. European umbrella organisations such as the European Platform for Rehabilitation (2016) have also commissioned studies and briefing papers on co-production.

This chapter will explore the contextual factors which help to explain the rise of interest in co-production. This analysis uses a PESTEL framework, which covers political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legislative drivers of co-production. This is necessarily quite a brief tour through each of the relevant factors—however, some especially important co-production drivers such as leadership and digital technologies will be analysed further in later chapters of this book.

Following this discussion of the factors driving co-production in policy and practice in OECD countries, this chapter then provides an overview of the evolution of the concept in public administration and policy.

1.2 Contextual Factors Promoting Co-production of Public Services and Outcomes

1.2.1 The Growing Interest in Co-production of Public Services and Outcomes

Not so long ago the term co-production was mainly used for the joint productions by media companies making films or television programmes together. More recently, this has changed dramatically—co-production has become one of the most widely used terms in the social sciences, but now in the sense of citizens as users of public services or members of the community working together with public service organisations. In particular, literature reviews show that in the field of public management and administration there has been an almost exponential increase in the number of articles making reference to co-production in the last ten years (Voorberg et al. 2015; Sicilia et al. 2019). Moreover, in the UK, the term has also become part of public sector policy and practice—for example, it has appeared in civil service reports (Horne and Shirley 2009) and even in government programmes (Christie 2011) and is now to be found in the strategic plans of an increasing number of local authorities and health and social care partnerships. Co-production, and in particular co-design, is also becoming a key element of digital transformation strategies in the public sector (Scottish Government 2018).

Of course, this does not necessarily imply that there is now a shared understanding of co-production of public services and outcomes in the academic community or in public service organisations. Indeed, use of the term has become so widespread, and it has been applied to so many phenomena, that there is a risk that it is becoming the victim of its own success. If everything is described as ‘co-production’, then the concept ceases to add anything meaningful. Hence this monograph on the co-production of public services and outcomes, which seeks to both clarify and to exemplify the role, the potential and the limitations of user and community co-production.

Throughout this book, we will be exploring in detail how citizens, both as service users and as members of their communities, can contribute to improving public services and achieving publicly-desired outcomes. This means that we do not limit co-production to improving public services, since public services are only a means to an end—namely, to improve publicly-desired outcomes, including both quality of life outcomes for citizens and public governance principles.

It is also important to note at the outset that this is not a book about ‘citizenship’ in the political science sense nor about ‘community development’—we use both the terms ‘citizen’ and ‘community’ in a very broad sense. Specifically, we take the term ‘citizen’ to include residents in a particular country, whether or not they have formal citizenship status. It therefore includes people such as migrants or children who are not allowed to vote.

Again, we often contrast ‘user co-production’ with ‘community co-production’. ‘User co-production’ focuses on the co-production relationship between public service organisations and those using a specific service. ‘Community co-production’, on the other hand, highlights how people in a specific community, including many who do not use a public service, may make a contribution to improve publicly desired outcomes through their co-production. Often the communities about which we are talking will be defined by geographic boundaries—but not always. In particular, in the digital age we need to recognise that communities may also be defined by their shared interests (Loeffler and Bovaird 2018, 405).

Above, we have already used the term ‘public service organisations’, so it is also important to note right at the beginning that we include within this category all organisations, whether from public, private or third sectors, which make a significant contribution to public services—which also means, of course, that they are likely to have an interest in co-production of public services with citizens.

1.2.2 User and Community Co-production in a Context of Austerity

How can this increasing interest in co-production be explained? Academic interest in the concept of co-production originated with the Ostroms and their colleagues in the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, Bloomington (known as the ‘Bloomington School’), who coined the term (see Parks et al. 1981 and Ostrom 1996). This was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period of economic uncertainty and even recession in the US. Similarly, the recent renaissance of co-production research around the world has occurred in the context of financial austerity, which has meant a reduction of government spending and lower living standards in many countries (Loeffler 2016, 325).

It is therefore tempting to assume that interest in co-production is essentially an offspin from austerity and, in consequence, that it is being used as a strategy for cutting public spending. Indeed, it sometimes suggested that co-production is just a cover for ‘dumping government responsibilities on the public’ and that public sector interest in the potential benefits of co-production is actually just a pretence. From this perspective, co-production is simply a nice way of describing how responsibility for citizen wellbeing has been passed to those least able to cope—essentially it is the public sector saying ‘make better use of your own resources, because you can’t have ours’. As a community activist commented in 2012 on the launch of a major co-production initiative of the London Borough of Lambeth: “It was a top-down initiative. There had been no large-scale attempt to engage the community and voluntary sector in debating and shaping it [before it was announced]. Many affected treated it with a great deal of scepticism, as a cover for a Labour council to make massive budget cuts palatable” (Creighton 2012). Seven years later, another local resident blogged: “Lambeth Council is still officially a Co-operative Council. This may come as a surprise for some residents, especially those living on estates threatened with unwanted regeneration, or those fighting to keep their libraries open or people who don’t want to see their precious parkland handed over to private companies every year” (Cobb 2018).

This perceived “deliberate rejection of responsibility” (Steen et al. 2018, 284) by the public sector points to an aspect of the ‘dark side’ of co-production. However, far from being the purpose of co-production, ‘hollowing out the state’ by transferring full responsibility for public services to citizens actual...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Why Co-producing Public Services and Public Outcomes with Citizens Is Timely
• 2. Distinguishing Types and Levels of Co-production: Concepts and Definitions
• 3. The Four Co’s: Co-commissioning, Co-design, Co-delivery and Co-assessment of Public Services and Outcomes Through Traditional and Digital Mechanisms
• 4. Co-production in Health, Social Care and Public Safety
• 5. Challenges to Effective Co-production of Public Services and Outcomes
• 6. Evaluating Co-production
• 7. The Future of Co-production: Policies, Strategies and Research Needs
• Back Matter