Supporting Communities through Social Government in Co-Creation and Co-Production of Public Services: The SocialGov Concept and Platform Architecture

Governments are facing demands towards more transparency, better connectivity and collaboration among different actors in public service provisioning. Their constituencies demand that public services better reflect citizens' needs and social innovation. Integrating Internet, Web 2.0, social media and new concepts of open government and community governance bear tremendous potentials for engaging citizens and businesses in co-creation and co-production of public services and therewith addressing their high expectations. This paper first reviews existing concepts of co-creation and co-production. Subsequently, the Social Government (SocialGov) concept is introduced, which implements new trends of co-creation and co-production of public services in a collaborative environment. In SocialGov, the actors collaborate on the par with one another and the citizens and businesses take over social and public responsibility in their local communities.