Co-producing public services: what, who, when and how? A discussion with Professor John Alford

About the event

Co-production - in which government shares the delivery of public services with other organisations and citizens - has drifted in and out of government reformers' vision for several decades, but is now assuming greater prominence.

In this seminar, Professor John Alford looks at:

• what co-production means
• who might be involved
• when it is a good idea to use it
• the different ways of eliciting contributions of time and effort to public purposes.

Professor John Alford is Professor of Public Sector Management, Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

He is author of Engaging Public Sector Clients: From Service-Delivery to Co-production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and won the American Society for Public Administration's Best Book Award for 2011.

Discussants

• Lauren Cumming - Policy Analyst at the Serco Institute, previously Project Director for the Better Outcomes and Transformation work at the 2020 Public Services Trust where she wrote Payment by Outcome: A Commissioner's Toolkit
• Ann Griffiths - Head of Policy, London Borough of Ealing. Ann has worked coordinating Ealing partnerships to provide a consistent local approach to data and information, looking at how we can provide services to families in need more effectively and efficiently, producing partnership approaches to use of assets
• Julia Slay - acting head of co-production at the new economics foundation (nef). nef have been in the forefront of developing the theory and practice of co-production for almost a decade. They are working with a number of local authorities on commissioning for outcomes, and with NESTA to facilitate a network of co-production practitioners.

Professor John Alford

What is co-production?

Public organisations (producers) working with private organisations and / or individual citizens (co-producers) to produce desired outcomes.

Who are co-producers?

Depending on the service being delivered anyone can be a co-producer - from private companies, to voluntary organisations, to the individual consumers of the services themselves.

When does co-production happen?

Co-production can happen at all stages in the policy process. Usually co-producers are involved in the delivery and implementation stage of the public policy process. However John explained that co-producers can and should play an active role in the policy decision and policy planning stages to ensure that the policy can be implemented and will achieve its desired goals.

When should co-production be used?

Professor Alford outlined two criteria:

• substitutability - where an external party can do something better or cheaper than government can
• interdependent - when outcome are not achievable without contribution by co-producers.

How to get people to co-produce?

Financial incentives or legal authority, at least used in isolation, are unlikely to encourage co-production.

Three criteria can explain why people will co-produce if given the opportunity:

1. convenience / simplicity - people will co-produce when it is easy for them to do it and transaction costs are minimal - e.g. recycling
2. persuasion - publicity, education, support: Evidence shows that public awareness campaigns work
3. identification with organisational purposes - people participate because they agree with the purpose and ideas of the organisation.

Professor John Alford explained that the way we think about public services needs to undergo a fundamental shift in thinking to appreciate the potential of co-production to transform public services delivery of for the better.

It means thinking not just about outputs, what public servants do, but also about outcomes, why they do what they do and what the ultimate goals of the organisation are. (See John's presentation below)

Understanding outcomes enables producers to appreciate the role that others, (the co-producers) play in ensuring goals are achieved.

Lauren Cumming

Encouraging people to co-production

Incentive structures are powerful inducements to co-produce and work in certain circumstances but they do not work in isolation. Many citizens need to experience a mind-shift if they are to become co-producers.

Ability and willingness effect take-up of co-production opportunities and numerous strategies exist to address them.

• ability -many people do not co-produce because they believe they do not have the ability to make a difference. Support, teaching, persuasion and the skills of frontline staff can and do succeed in encouraging people to believe that they can co-produce.
• willingness - some people however are simply unwilling to coproduce. Regulations and compulsion, financial incentives and penalties can work to an extent, overall however their usefulness is limited, especially on the totally unwilling, and often they cause resentment among willing co-producers.

Ann Griffiths

Co-production is already happening

In local communities across the country councils are actively working with local citizens to plan, design and implement public services. More however could be done:

• technology a means to co-production - by using social media governments could support, encourage and drive co-operative collaboration further, something that is currently under-utilised. Thanks to technological advancements people today are already sharing ideas socially in large networks not confined by geography with people of similar interests. Government can easily tap into this to find co-producers in a range of currently under-explored policy areas.
• government mindset needs to change - firstly however local government needs to become more adaptive, must learn to "let go", and trust people to take decisions about services.

Julia Slay

Co-production in practice, an example

At a nursery in Tower Hamlets called Scallywags parents purchase heavily subsidised childcare in exchange for one day's volunteer work as a child-carer once every two weeks.

This is an instructive case of how incentives can be designed to encourage co-production. It also has had additional benefits, cultivating a sense of community among parents enabling them to develop a social support network.

In debate afterwards some felt that co-production needed to be defined more narrowly than John Alford had done, to require a substantial contribution from the citizen, otherwise the term became so elastic as to be meaningless.

Concerns were expressed about the degree of divergence in provision it might trigger. Other participants wondered whether it might not simply be easier to give people the cash to make their own decisions.

Rhys Williams

More information

• Listen to a podcast of this event (MP3, 1h:26m)
• Presentation: Co-production in the public sector: What, who, when and how?(Powerpoint, 706KB)