What is it about?
Promotion of more intensive user and community co-production not only opens up new potential for a transformation of public services, but can also support the wider principles of public governance. This book chapter explores the characteristics of co-production, its theoretical underpinnings and its different forms: co-commissioning, co-design, co-delivery and co-assessment (the four co’s). It then analyses how the four co’s might contribute to the ‘principles of good governance’, suggesting that the concern of many authors may be overdone about whether the governance of co-production can meet such high standards as the governance of professionally-provided services. Indeed, co-production may actually play a counterbalancing role to the over-dominance of politicians or state bureaucrats in interactive governance. Finally, the chapter looks at the empirical evidence and suggests some conclusions and implications arising from this analysis.
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Why is it important?
A key issue which needs to be further researched is the level of risk attached to co-production. Public managers and professionals are concerned that users and communities have relatively little technical experience in tackling social problems. On the other hand, there is increasing concern that public sector organisations may themselves, in the past, have underestimated the risks involved in public sector provision and may not have understood properly how services can valuably be quality assured by involving users and communities in service co-production (Bovaird and Quirk, 2013). The complex interactions between the 4 co’s, in relation to each citizen, and between the different stakeholders with whom citizens must interact, make it difficult to assess these risks with any confidence – but this suggests the need for experimentation, rather than being mesmerised by the risks into inaction.
Perspectives
It is important to recognise that, while user and community co-production, as a form of interactive governance, can achieve major improvements in outcomes, service quality, and service costs, this has resource consequences. There is a balance to be struck here: demographic change not only increases the number of elderly who are ill and need care but it also offers the state new resources and new opportunities to help shift from a welfare society to a wellbeing society - there are now more older people than ever before who wish to do something meaningful when they retire, and are sufficiently educated, experienced and motivated to make important contributions. However, initiating such approaches can involve substantial set-up costs and supporting them effectively will usually involve significant public sector resources. We should also remember that co-production requires resource contributions from citizens (although the public sector usually has ‘resource blindness’, only noticing those resources which it must devote itself). Co-production, by definition, always requires both public inputs and citizen inputs – it is not ‘free’.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
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This page is a summary of: What has co-production ever done for interactive governance?, Edward Elgar Publishing,
DOI: 10.4337/9781783479078.00017.
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