User and community co-production of public services: What does the evidence tell us?

This article, examines some of the key claims made for co-production and assesses how they stack up against the empirical evidence, paying particular attention to areas where practice must be cautious about the potential contribution of co-production. The literature reviewed here comes from three different sources. First, a search was conducted of the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, searching for articles in public administration and kindred subjects. Second, the authors used their own collection of international books, book chapters, research reports, government reports, and articles in non-refereed journals containing references to co-production. Third, evidence was collected on outcomes, performance indicators, and costs from the large range of case studies of co-production on the Governance International website (www.govint.org/good-practice/case-studies) and other publications by the authors.

The article concludes that, in spite of the current excitement about user and community co-production in public services, the evidence base is still relatively weak. The surveys which have been conducted of the level of co-production in different are still few in number and very weak on evidence of impacts. The many case studies of co-production which exist tend to be strong on highlighting the nature and level of co-production and, to a lesser extent, evidencing specific short-term impacts—but are weak on wider, longer-term impacts. Finally, there have only been a very small number of evaluations which have covered the wider and longer-term outcomes from co-production initiatives.

Cite as: Loeffler, Elke and Bovaird, Tony (2016), “User and community co-production of public services: What does the evidence tell us?” International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 39 (13):1006-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2016.1250559.