What is it about?
This chapter focuses on the roles of citizens in collaborative innovation, approaching this issue through the lens of user and community co-production with public service providers (from whatever sector) and exploring how citizens’ experiences, ideas, energies and resources can be brought into the social innovation process. It argues that the contribution of citizens to public service innovation is already high, but it could be much greater. A recent summary of the international empirical evidence on co-production demonstrates consistently that the level of co-production activities in all countries tends to be high, and many citizens are willing to do more than they currently do. However, there was a widespread tendency for managers and professionals in public services to underestimate how much co-production was actually occurring. This suggests that although co-production is important, it is a social innovation which is more often hidden than publicized. This may be because much co-production practice tends to emerge from the frontline, rather than top-down from organization leaders. Another striking finding from these surveys is that demographic variables do not appear to have a strong influence on the level of current co-production or the willingness to undertake more – although gender and age sometimes show up as significant, the effects are always weak and other demographic variables (education level, ethnicity, urban/rural location) are rarely important. This characteristic of co-production marks it out from public participation and citizen engagement. As user and community co-production often emerges from the intense interaction of frontline professionals with citizens, it is likely to engage especially those who are keen to make a contribution themselves (the ‘willing to do’), rather than simply those who are keen to tell others what to do (the ‘willing to talk’), whereas many public participation and citizen engagement initiatives may attract more of the latter.
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Why is it important?
The finding that demographic variables do not appear to have a strong influence on the level of current co-production or the willingness to undertake more suggests that governments should not prejudge who is likely to (or not likely to) get involved in co-production, to avoid ignoring potential co-producers. This is exciting – it suggests that social innovation in public services can tap into a much larger pool of resources than has traditionally been realized.
Perspectives
This chapter raises the question: What will determine whether co-production, as a social innovation, is likely to be done well or badly? A key lesson from the case studies in the chapter is the need to invest in a new public infrastructure – co-production is not ‘free’, it requires both sides to make inputs in order to release the potential synergies in collaboration with each other. And such investment is generally not simply a ‘rational’ calculation; it is a social action, which links innovative practice to social purpose. This highlights the precarious nature of the current political interest in co-production – if it is based simply on a fanciful belief that governments in financial crisis can cut their budgets by passing the buck to citizens, it is doomed to failure. Co-production, by definition, requires joint commitment from citizens and governments. Without citizen-powered innovation, public services are likely to repeat the deficiencies of the past; however, without investment from the public sector, even imaginative innovation is likely to be ineffective and wasteful.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bringing the Resources of Citizens into Public Governance: Innovation through Co-production to Improve Public Services and Outcomes, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/cbo9781316105337.008.
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