Co-production and evaluation of effects

1. Co-production and evaluation of effects Pekka Kettunen University of Jyväskylä & THL

2. Definitions • Co-production of public services not a frequently used concept • Useful to divide into organisational and individual levels (implementation/civil-society) • Secondly, into visible and invisible levels of analysis • Levels of analysis + evaluation

3. Organisational level: visible • Many public services are produced in concert by several public and/or private organisations • Often called partnership (ppp) or networks • Useful to design and implement policies by the relevant actors • Many challenges

4. Organisational level: invisible • Seen from below many social problems are dealt with by not only public authorities • Kenneth Hanf: The final output of enforcement activities is in important ways a joint product in so far as no one actor is in a position to produce it directly on its own • A bottom-up (backward mapping) approach: policy problem –> reconstruction of the implementation structure • Findings: beside the public authorities also market and civil-society actors solve social problems • Public authorities frequently interact with other actors in their day-to-day work • We should not assume how public services are being produced -> “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”

5. Users and co-producers • We often conceive the public sector in terms of public authorities • But, rather than assuming that for instance the existence of a fire service is the result of the government recognizing a problem and designing the most appropriate agency to deal with it, we might ask how people have responded to the risk of fire, noting the activities of householders, neighbors, community groups, insurance companies, and local authorities, and asking how this became an issue for the government (Colebatch 2009)

6. Co-production = citizen activity • Consumers of public safety add to their consumption and add to the community’s supply of public safety by installing extra locks and outdoor lightning to their homes, changing living patterns to decrease exposure to attack, training in methods of self-defense, joining with neighbors tom patrol the neighborhood, and providing police with details about criminal incidents.

7. Co-production in economic theory • Three factors, technology, economics and institutional constrains together determine the proportioning of regular producer and consumer producer inputs in the production of good and services • Public managers cannot always require that consumers increase or decrease their inputs

8. Service production by the citizens • From Putnam to Bang & Sørensen • ”Everyday Maker” By studying a neighborhood in Copenhagen, Inner Nørrebro, they stated that people there might increasingly be bowling alone and be reluctant to engage in full time voluntary work or civil struggle against government. But this does not in any way indicate that they are in the process of reducing themselves to passive supporters or enemies of democratic government.

9. Users as co-producers play an important role • Both in specific service interactions and in service production at large the role of the citizens important: For example teachers and schools can do little to educate the student who is completely unwilling to pay attention to instructions and participate in the education process. • The public sector, the public service production, is in many ways dependent on the citizen society

10. Evaluation challenges Users • Not all users can express themselves equally well –> representation • More concern on how user information focused on different elements of a service • Professional-user-dialogue not without problems

11. …challenges • Co-production at the organisational level not easy to assess • Partnership: total results sum of the partial inputs • Universal services vs. tailored services (Rothstein 1994) • Failure to recognize the potential significance of citizen involvement in service delivery • Effects of public service ”the other side of the coin” or one factor among others

12. Future • User-based evaluation close to empowerment • Does the role of service-users (patients, pupils, clients) improve? • Can the authorities demand co-production? “If citizens refuse to become co-producers where their efforts are needed, then citizens share responsibility with service agencies for inadequate service levels in the community” Parks et al. 1981

13. References • Bang, Henrik & Sörensen, Eva (1998) The Everyday Maker: a New Challenge to Democratic Governance. COS-Rapport 3/1998. Copenhagen. • Colebatch, Hal (2009) Making sense of governance. Paper presented in the World Congress of International Political Science Association, Santiago, Chile. • Hanf, Kenneth (1993) Enforcing environmental laws: the social regulation of co-production. In Michael Hill, editor, New Agendas in the Study of the Policy Process. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 88-109. • Kiser, L (1984) Towards an institutional theory of citizen co-production. Urban affaits Quarterly 19: 485-510. • Parks, R et al (1981) Consumers as co-producers of public services: some economic and institutional considerations. Policy Studies Journal 9: 1001-1011. • Rothstein, Bo (1994) Vad bör staten göra? Stockholm, SNS-Förlag. • Vedung, Evert (2007) Evaluation Research. In B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, editors, Handbook of Public Policy.