In recent years there has been a radical reinterpretation of the role of policy making and service delivery in the public domain. This article from the Public Administration Review explores a framework for the new range of user and community coproduction roles in local public services with illustrations from the UK, France and Brazil. Traditional conceptions of service planning and management are now outdated and need to be revised to account for coproduction as an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilisation.
Coproduction is the provision of services through regular long-term relationships between professionalised service providers and service users/other community members. Policy making is thus no longer a purely top-down process but a negotiation among many interacting policy systems. Services are no longer simply delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies but are coproduced by users and their communities.
Coproduction raises important public governance issues that have implications for public service reform. A new public service ethos is required whereby the central role of professionals would be to support, encourage, and coordinate the coproduction capabilities of service users and the communities in which they live. There is also a need for a new type of public service professional: the coproduction development officer.
The benefits of coproduction include more practical choices open to users through active experience of services from coproduction. Coproduction may also transfer some power from professionals to users as it means both parties contribute resources and have legitimate voice. Furthermore, coproduction may mobilise community resources not otherwise available to deal with public issues.
Six case studies illustrate key aspects of the different types of relationships between service professionals, users, and their communities:
- Traditional professional service provision with user/community consultation on planning and design issues: Participatory budgeting process in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil.
- User codelivery of professionally designed services: Sure Start initiative in Gateshead, England.
- Full user/professional coproduction: Caterham Barracks Community Trust in Caterham, England.
- User/community codelivery of services with professionals without formal planning or design processes: Beacon Community Regeneration Partnership in Falmouth, England.
- User/community delivery of professionally planned services: Villa Family in France.
- User/community sole delivery of coplanned or codesigned services: Tackley Village shop in rural Oxfordshire, England.
Coproduction by users and communities has the potential to challenge the recent fragmentation of public sector organisations. Nevertheless, the following issues need to be considered:
- Potential problems with coproduction include conflicting values, incompatible incentives to different coproducers, unclear division of roles, and free riders. It can lead to burnout of users/community members and the undermining of capacity of the third sector to lobby for change.
- Coproduction can dilute public accountability, blurring the boundaries between the public, private and voluntary sectors. However the act of participation in governance can also clarify lines of accountability and responsibility.
- There can be costs in participating in coproduction. Who participates and why needs careful exploration.
- Coproduction is a relatively new concept and there may be significant governance implications. For example, how willing would politicians be to contest the role of professionals and to place more trust in decisions made by users and communities?
