SI vida o, más
2.3.3. La confesión
Current methods in measuring public service effectiveness are mainly based on evaluating the reduction of administrative burden and customer satisfaction, which do not really reflect the issue of effectiveness, as underlined by R. Pizzicatella98. In this research the concepts of co-production and open data are presented and discussed with respect to their relevance to public service effectiveness. The two concepts (and the correspondent practices) indeed share the belief that a high level of involvement of citizens is needed to ensure better services, opening up new perspective when effectiveness of public services is concerned.
In recent years in effect a concept/approach has got high attention in the domain of public services:
“openness”. In its application to the governmental activities it is generally referred as open government. “Open government is the political doctrine which holds that the business of government and state administration should be opened at all levels to effective public scrutiny and oversight” (definition from Wikipedia)99. Essentially the open government approach asks for opening the government activities to ensure transparency and accountability. In a number of EU countries this has been tackled promoting participation and engagement of citizens in the processes of political decision-making.
Although open government is a relatively old concept, and it’s often linked with the adoption of
“free of information” legislations, it has gained a renewed attention in the recent years (especially in the EU) with its connection to the issue of Open Data. “Open Data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control” (definition from Wikipedia)100.
Open data approach asks for the availability of the large amount of information detained/produced by the public sector in a free and open format. The idea has both economic motivation (“The MEPSIR study (2006) contracted by the Commission, for example, puts the overall market size for the re-use of PSI (Public Sector Information) in the European Union at €27 billion.” (EU
98 Roberto Pizzicannella, Co-production and open data: the right mix for public service effectiveness?, op. cit.
99 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_government
100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data
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Commission, 2009)) and more general basis (the data are produced and maintained by use of public resources, so they have to be “publicly available”).
But probably the most important motivation of open data is based on the belief that by “freeing” the huge amount of public owned data it will unlock the creativity of civil society and individuals in producing services of public interest.101 Examples of such kind of services are already available in some EU Member States (see the report of a workshop held in Brussels on “Public Services 2.0”, Osimo et al., 2009)102.
Open data/Open government approaches have been encompassed by a number of important countries (US, UK, New Zealand) that adopted legislation or other regulatory initiatives to enforce public agencies to make their data available online in open format and to promote their (re)use. For example, the data.gov.uk website make available a large number of UK government data and is collecting ideas and applications, developed by individuals, that make use of such data.
Meanwhile, the approach to openness is also the basis of the “open declaration on European public services” presented at the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Sweden (November 2009).
The declaration is built on the three core principles of transparency, participation and engagement to “ask the European governments and the European Commission to incorporate these principles in their eGovernment action plans and ensure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the benefits of transparent, participative, empowering government as soon as possible” (Open Declaration, 2009)103.
The open data approach seems to have at its heart the recognition of the high potential that users (citizens) represent in term of knowledge and willingness to participate in the improvement of public services. In fact, the emerging interest in open data is also due to the dramatic growth in sophistication and use of the so called social-computing applications (Osimo, 2008104¸ Huijboom et al. 2009105) that open augmented possibilities of collective efforts in expressing need and finding answers to social issues.
101 Open Data White Paper Unleashing the Potential, Rt Hon. Francis Maude, 2012.
102 Osimo, D., Campbell, D., Kerr-Stevens, J., Bishop, C. and Bryant, L. (2009) “Public services 2.0 - Web 2.0 from the periphery to the centre of public service delivery - report from the workshop”; September.
http://www.epractice.eu/files/ePractice%20Workshop%20Report%20on%20Public%20services%202.0_Web%202.0%
20from%20the%20periphery%20to%20the%20centre%20of%20public%20service%20delivery_0.pdf, op. cit. in Roberto Pizzicannella, Co-production and open data: the right mix for public service effectiveness?, op. cit.
103 https://eups20.wordpress.com/the-open-declaration/
104 Osimo D. (2008) “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How?”; JRC Scientific and Technical Reports EUR 23358 EN.
2008. ftp://ftp.jrc.es/pub/EURdoc/JRC45269.pdf , op. cit. in Roberto Pizzicannella, ibidem.
105 Huijboom, N., Van Den Broek, T., Frissen, V., Kool, L., Kotterink, B., Meyerhoff Nielsen, M. and Millard, J. (2009)
“Public Services 2.0: The Impact of Social Computing on Public Services”; Punie, Y., Misuraca, G., Osimo, D. (eds) JRC Scientific and Technical Report series EUR 24080 EN – 2009. ftp://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC54203.pdf , op. cit. in Roberto Pizzicannella, ibidem.
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In the light of above the objective of this research is to reflect on the issues of co-production and open data and to investigate to which extent the combination of co-production and open data can contribute to public service effectiveness. In the current effectiveness measurement practices one of the characteristics is indeed the sharp distinction between service provider and user and this maybe is one of the reasons of the difficulty in defining and measuring their effectiveness.
Both co-production and open data rely on the principle of deeper engagement of citizens and more in general of civil society in the “government affairs”. They promote the idea that the participation of the “user” can dramatically improve the quality of the “product” of public administration (whether services or policy decisions). The users of the services are considered hidden resources that can collaborate with public sector professionals in delivering services of their interest.
Both co-production and open data aim at blurring the distinction between the “inside” and “outside”
of the public sector, removing the sharp distinction between providers and users of public services and promoting the collaboration between the two groups. They offer a dramatic change of perspective in considering public service effectiveness and pose a significant question: are co-production and open data the right ingredients to achieve more effective public service delivery models?
In this respect, the main issues can be summarized as follows:
1. Establish/build a comprehensive definition of effectiveness in public service. This is not only a question of formality, but a real need to clearly distinguish the concept of effectiveness from other related ones, like for example, quality and efficiency (in the domain of public services).
2. Understanding possible relations between co-production and open data. As has been argued previously, co-production and open data share the belief that a major involvement of users increases possibility to provide better services.
In this context two possible relations can be considered (figure 10)
Possible relations between co-production and open data
Figure 10
Source: Roberto Pizzicannella, Co-production and open data: the right mix for public service effectiveness?
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a. One relation to explore is the positive impact that open data can have on co-production practices.
In other words, can the access to large amount of public data make the citizens more aware and more willing to participate in service delivery?
b. Another relation concerns the possibility to apply co-production approach in services proposed/created by the users (e.g. Apps development). Today, in general, the public services are conceived/decided by the professionals in the public sector, based on the tasks and duty that the institutional/legal framework assigns to government. Open data gives the possibility to users and their community to create their own services.
And furthermore:
3. How the mechanisms underlying co-production and open data can be combined to enhance the effectiveness of public service delivery? In other words, are there delivery models based on use of co-production and open data that can provide more effective public services?
4. Investigating if and how social computing applications enable the combination of co-production and open data.
The overall set of issues/questions listed above are interlinked. They are represented in figure 11 to provide a consistent framework of inquiry aimed at developing the following case study where the mechanisms/concepts of co-production and open data will be deeply analyzed in order to derive a System Dynamics model able to show these inter-linkages.
The relations among the identified research issues
Figure 11
Source: Roberto Pizzicannella, Co-production and open data: the right mix for public service effectiveness?
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