P32 Digital coproduction: setting the ground for public value co-creation in the digital domain amidst opportunities and pitfalls

Panel Chairs

Corresponding and review group chair

Taco Brandsen, Radboud University

Co-chairs

Carmine Bianchi, University of Palermo

Rocco Palumbo, University of Rome "Tor Vergata"

Ina Radtke, Radboud University

Dr. A. Paula Rodriguez Müller - Joint Research Centre – European Commission, Spain

Trui Steen, KU Leuven

Jungwon Yeo, University of Central Florida

Panel description:

The digital transformation generates unprecedented opportunities for empowering citizens, extending the spaces where people participate in public value co-creation. One such opportunity is digital coproduction, i.e., coproduction in which ICT plays a significant role. It is often assumed that new technologies will foster coproduction by making participation processes more effective and efficient, lowering barriers to citizen engagement, and making public value co-creation less time- and place-dependent. Citizens can fill out forms from home or report dirt, loose paving stones and broken lampposts. Also, more substantive contact can occur virtually, through online citizen fora and referenda. While this kindles hope for new opportunities to involve citizens, it is accompanied by a largely uncritical acceptance of the potential of ICT. Several challenges ensue, some of which reflect issues already encountered in the analog world, such as the fact that many citizens are unwilling or unable to participate. There is debate as to whether digital tools broaden (by engaging groups of citizens that formerly were less engaged) or rather deepen participation (by increasing the engagement of ‘the usual suspects’). In fact, digitalization brings several pitfalls, enacting new divides that can prevent disadvantaged groups of the population from establishing co-creating relationships with public sector entities.

Scholarly contributions illuminating the features and challenges that characterize public value co-creation in the digital realm are burgeoning. Nevertheless, there are few insights about what public sector entities should and can do to facilitate and improve the virtual encounter between public servants and citizens. This panel intends to nurture a debate among scholars and practitioners to highlight the advantages and disadvantages triggered by the digitalization of public value co-creation, drawing on the insights delivered by the forthcoming book “Digital Coproduction of Public Services: Citizens, Challenges and Cases”, edited by the panel chairs.

The panel pursues three main goals. First, it discriminates the attributes of co-creation practices in the digital realm, pointing out its challenges and benefits. Second, it frames co-creating exchanges between public servants and citizens in the digital domain, assessing the quality of public services that are co-produced digitally. Third, it enlightens organizational actions required to activate co-creating relationships in the digital world, focusing on experiences of co-designing and co-implementing public services through digital platforms.

Attention is primarily paid to interventions that, from a strategic, structural, and managerial perspective, are conducive to enhancing the public sector entities’ ability to build robust and fertile co-creating relationships with citizens exploiting digital tools and channels. Reshaping strategies in a people-centered perspective, shifting to adaptive structures, and stimulating flexible work arrangements advance the organizational readiness toward digital public value co-creation. Furthermore, public servants’ attitudes and motivation should be solicited. Digitalization reshapes how public servants make sense of their jobs and give senses to organizational phenomena, modifying how they conceive their exchanges with citizens. Overlooking the change in public servants’ attitudes and motivation in the digital setting prevents us from substantiating citizens’ engagement in the digital servicescape. Digitalization usually comes at the cost of techno-centricity and techno-optimism, softening the human touch of the public service exchange and desensitizing the process of public value creation. This might lead to resignation, hampering the accomplishment of public value co-creation in the digital setting.

The panel welcomes all types of scientific endeavors. Conceptual developments aimed at contextualizing the pros and cons of public value co-creation in the digital domain, literature reviews synthesizing extant research, and empirical studies intended to build reliable evidence of digital public service coproduction are welcome. Furthermore, the panel solicits practice-oriented contributions that collect insights from real-life experience.

The panel generates meaningful implications for theory and practice. It enables us to reflect on the applicability of contemporary conceptual lenses in the digital domain. Besides, it highlights the perils and dangers that affect the co-creation of public value in the digital world, inspiring actions to engage public servants and citizens in a solid commitment toward advancing the functioning of the public service system.

Relevant topics that the panel will address include, although not limited to:

• Professionals’ and citizens’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes conducive to engaging citizens through digital public value co-creation and co-production;
• Strategic resources and organisational/managerial conditions for effectively engaging citizens through digital public value co-creation and co-production;
• Antecedents, drivers, challenges, and (expected and unexpected) outcomes of digital public service co-creation and coproduction.