Description:

Trust is considered as a crucial issue at all levels of governance. An effective democratic society depends on the confidence citizens have in their government for designing and managing public policies and public sector (citizens/users trust) but also on the trust that civil servants have in the public sector reforms (inner trust, within the public sector).

During the recent decades, with the economic and other crises and with the current developments in the governance systems, we observed a decrease of the trust in governments and in public administration. The distrust is alarming and questions the models of governance, the democratic system and calls for innovations to improve the performance, efficiency and effectiveness in responding to the citizens’ needs and to the challenges of our society.

Restoring trust requests several measures/actions to strengthen integrity, transparency, accountability but also the engagement/involvement of all the partners/stakeholders of this interaction.

The 2015 IIAS Congress will focus on this important topic of Trust and Public Administration.

One way to restore trust in the Public Sector is to make sure that the citizens/the users will be associated to the processes of construction of public actions, public policies and services: designing, producing, delivering, evaluating. Co-production takes place at different stages of the policy process, from planning through delivery and review.

Co-production has become one of the most common ways to include citizens and users in the dynamics of public services and public policies around the world.

Public services face an extraordinary set of challenges. But by involving individuals and users in the design and delivery of public services through co-production, services can be more effective, efficient and sustainable.

Reforming public services is to encourage users to design and deliver services in equal partnership with professionals. A recent report of OECD (2014) entitled Together for Better Public Services Partnering with Citizens and Civil Society mentioned innovative approaches to service delivery based on partnerships that governments form with citizens, users and civil society organisations. The report also mentioned that unsurprisingly, users are likely to be co-producers for personal services such as health and social care, and citizens input to services which are community-based.

The IIAS Study Group on Co-production of Public services also identify key issues to be addressed as: the role of service users in the production of public services internationally, the organization and structure of public service organizations, the interaction between professionals and people using and coproducing services, he relationship between public spending and coproduction etc.

This IIAS panel will address the relations between trust and the co-production of public services.

The IIAS panelists will focus on the different aspects of this important issue:

1) What is co‐production of public services?What it means in term of trust?

2) How to improve trust by involving citizens in co-construction of public actions and services?

3) What are the processes and the legal framework to include people in the co-production of public services?

4) What are the advantages and the risks of co-production processes?

5) Co-production, accountability and trust? A relation to be revisited?

6) Governments, citizens/users and the other partners: a quest of trust and competences?

Chair of the Panel

·Rolet Loretan, IIAS Director General, Chair/moderator (confirmed)

Discussant

·Munira Aminova, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (confirmed)

Panelists:

·Taco Brandsen, Professor Radboud University Nijmegen, EGPA Steering Committee Member (confirmed)

·Marius Profiroiu, Professor Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, NISPAcee President, Speaker (confirmed)

·Iwona Sobis, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration University of Gothenburg (confirmed)

Abstracts and Short Bios of the Panelists:

Taco BRANDSEN, Professor Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), EGPA Steering Committee Member EAPAA Secretary General

ABSTRACT:Co-Production of Public Services: common experiences among governments working to engage citizens.

Co-production of public services means that these services are no longer only delivered by professionals, managers and policymakers, but co-produced by citizens. The concept of co-production is at the crossroads between several academic disciplines, which makes it an increasingly targeted topic for many scholars. While recent sector-specific case studies on this topic have advanced the debate considerably, there is still no comprehensive theoretical and systematic empirical understanding of the co-production process, to what extent citizens really have input in the production process, and to what extent it really delivers outcomes such as trust. Such an understanding is crucial to meet the high expectations of co-production among professionals and policymakers.

Taco Brandsen’s contribution will discuss some of the most common experiences among governments working to engage citizens.

BIO:

Taco Brandsen is an acknowledged experts on co-production and has published oft-cited work on the topic. His research inks the themes of public management, innovation and civil society. He is currently Professor of Comparative Public Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen,board member of the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA), Vice-President of the International Research Society on Public Management (IRSPM), Member of the Board of Directors of the EMES Research Network, Treasurer of the Dutch Association for Public Administration and Secretary-General of the European Association of Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA).

Marius PROFIROIU, Professor Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, NISPAcee President,

ABSTRACT: Trust in public administration reform

Relating public administration reform, economic performance, and trust in governance is an ambitious task. It involves knowledge from several disciplines and outputs from practice. One approach is the citizens as political creatures who, for example, act as voters, protesters, or members of political institutions (e.g., Nye, Zelikow, & King, 1997; Verba, Schlozeman, & Brady, 1995).Others approach consider that citizens as clients of governments, as part of the emerging business-like public environment, or as those who act like customers in the marketplace of the state (e.g., Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Pollitt, 1988). Citizens tend to leave the process of political decision making and its implementation in the hands of the government.Does the public administration reform impact the governance or does the economic environment dictate what type of governance is created? Can we explain citizens' trust in government by using performance indicators as a measurement of the public administration reform?

As recently suggested by Ulbig (2002) studies linking trust in government to other variables including policy outputs or outcomes have given.Hence, this paper examines the above questions.

BIO:

Dr. Constantin Marius Profiroiu is Dean of Administration and Public Management School at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE). He is Professor of Public Policy and Governance and Fulbright Senior Alumnus 2010-2011.He is the President of the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPACee) since 2015. Marius Profiroiu was Director-general of the European Integration Department in Romania from 2001 to 2002 and also held the post of State Secretary within the Ministry of Public Administration and Interior between 2002-2004. He was in charge of the co-ordination of the public administration reform and responsible with the Phare program in the field of public administration reform and decentralization process in Romania. Marius Profiroiu is author of numerous publications in the field of public policy civil service, decentralisation, governance, strategic management.

Iwona SOBIS, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg

ABSTRACT:Trust and Co-Production in PA

Last two decades was observed a decrease of trust in governments and in public administration. Mass media criticized strong e.g., health care, elderly care, education system or collective traffic. The mistrust towards public services was connected to public reforms conducted in the spirit of NPM that gone across the whole Europe. Public services expected operate as companies, performance management, and outsourcing could cause a dialectic approach towards trust. Trust became an unambiguous concept although it was always an inevitable precondition for all kind human interaction, regardless of time and place. Without it, people would be unable to act. This postulate seems to be relevant when discussing trust, public service delivery and citizens at the time of co-production.

From research appears (e.g., Parsons, 1968; Reuter et al. 2013) that trust promotes co-operation among citizens and leads them to take active roles in their communities. It encourages sociability, participation with others and enriches networks (Sztompka, 1999). Trust contributes to social participation in co-production of public services and growing social integration. Trust can positively influence efficiency and effectiveness (e.g. Mitzal, 1996; Williamson, 1993). Nonetheless, human beings shouldn’t "blind trust”. Some skepticism is necessary. To trust, monitor and involve various actors in co-production of public services is the Swedish recipe (Kristensson Uggla, 2013).

According to Hardin, trust is three-part relation, in which policy makers (A) trust the constituency (B) to do policy process (X). However, it is lacking knowledge about A, B and X. Trust is depended on major objectives of policy, policy’s type, various phases in policy process, characteristics of situation and context and government’s expectations.

The conclusion is: co-production of public services involves probably more factors than we know from theory. Researcher ought to fulfill a gap and focus on: who should be involved in co-production, when, how, and in which phase of policymaking.

BIO:

Iwona Sobis is Associate Professor at the School of Public Administration, Gothenburg University. Her PhD-thesis (2002) was about public administrative reforms during the transition from socialism to market economy in Poland. The general conclusion was that the European Union assistance proved a very influential force behind the adaptive strategies. Her later research addressed the Western technical aid-chain to the Central and Eastern Europe countries in transition, which resulted in the book (2009): The story behind Western Advice to Central Europe during its Transition (NISPAcee Press). Since 2010, she continues research on public reforms but also the EU internal migration.