Co-Production and Co-Creation in Public Services: Resolving Confusion and Contradictions

Publications continue to affirm that there are no agreed definitions or conceptual frameworks for co-production and co-creation in relation to public services. Consequently, across and within academic and grey literature lie many examples of confusion and contradictions. These hinder insightful discussion and explanatory research. This paper argues that underlying this muddle is a failure to be clear about the nature and structure of public services. The commonly used “service to customers” model from commerce is a misleading oversimplification. To re-frame the discussions on co-creation and co-production, a model is developed of a generic multi-actor, multi-instrument system that helps to identify the real issues associated with governmental and non-governmental actors combining to achieve a social outcome. The system can be assessed in terms of relationships (e.g. degrees of openness and collaboration) and the role of technology (e-government). The essential role of the government is determined to be policy and system design.