What is it about?
In recent years, there has been a radical reinterpretation of the role of policy making and service deliveryin the public domain. Policy making is no longer seen as a purely top-down process but rather as a negotiation among many interacting policy systems. Similarly, services are no longer simply delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies but are coproduced by users and their communities. This article presents a conceptual framework for understanding the emerging role of user and community coproduction and presents several case studies that illustrate how different forms of coproduction have played out in practice. Traditional conceptions of service planning and management are now outdated and need to be revised to account for coproduction as an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilization—a potential that is still greatly underestimated. However, coproduction in the context of multipurpose, multistakeholder networks raises important public governance issues that have implications for public services reform.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The case studies in this article strongly suggest that traditional conceptions of professional service planning and delivery in the public domain are outdated, whether the professional is working in a monolithic bureaucracy, an arm’s- length agency, or an outsourced unit, and need to be revised to account for the potential of coproduction by users and communities. What is needed is a new public service ethos or compact in which the central role of professionals is to support, encourage, and coordinate the co-production capabilities of service users and the communities in which they live. Moreover, there is a need for a new type of public service professional: the co-production development officer, who can help to overcome the reluctance of many professionals to share power with users and their communities and who can act internally in organizations (and partnerships) to broker new roles for coproduction between traditional service professionals, service managers, and the political decision makers who shape the strategic direction of the service system.
Perspectives
This article makes the case for a radical conceptual revision of the role of the public sector. For over a century it has been seen as a service provider in order to compensate for all the ways in which we have failed to achieve a 'well-ordered society'. However, this no longer convinces either politicians or voters. The public sector must now radically reorganise its resources and activities to promote behaviour change, rather than to provide services directly. And this behaviour change has to be co-produced with service users and communities, not just with public service providers. Such a public sector is likely to be hugely more effective than one fixated on the professional 'public services' which are currently provided. It may or may not have lower budgets than the current public sector but, much more importantly, it will be central to citizens enjoying higher quality of life outcomes, which they help to co-produce themselves.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Beyond Engagement and Participation: User and Community Coproduction of Public Services, Public Administration Review, September 2007, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2007.00773.x.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
