Despite growing interest in the potential of digital technologies to enhance coproduction and co-creation in public services, there is a lack of hard evidence on their actual impact. Conceptual fuzziness and tech-optimism stand in the way of collecting such evidence. The article suggests an analytical framework that distinguishes between the impacts of different technologies on different elements of coproduction and co-creation, and illustrates this in three different areas. It argues that there is no reason to assume that digital technologies will always encourage coproduction or co-creation. In fact, they can also be used to bypass interaction with citizens.
Co-creation in public service delivery assumes a new kind of partnership between citizens and civil servants. Whether this partnership actually occurs varies per country. We examine to what extent state and governance traditions can explain whether co-creation changes public service delivery. Our research shows that state and governance traditions determine the extent to which co-creation can become institutionalized in a country's governance framework. Where there is an authoritative state tradition, co-creation initiatives will probably face more barriers and it will only cause change incrementally. Where there is a governance culture of consultation, the changes might occur faster and more openly.
Co-creation -where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues -is increasingly considered as a fertile solution for various public service delivery problems. During cocreation, citizens are not mere consumers, but are actively engaged in building resilient societies. In this study, we analyze if and how state and governance traditions influence learning and policy change within a context of co-creation. We combine insights from the co-creation and learning literature. The empirical strategy is a comparative case study of co-creation examples within the welfare domain in childcare (Estonia), education (Germany) and community work (the Netherlands). We show that state and governance traditions may form an explanation for whether co-creation, learning and policy change occurs. Our paper suggests that this seems to be related to whether there is a tradition of working together with citizens and a focus on rule following or not.
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