Lucie, Geraldine Cahill (from SiG at MaRS), Karen (our manager at CIWC), and I meet a few weeks ago after Lucie's session at MaRS. She had a number of great examples on how her organization, nef (new economics foundation), has successfully facilitated programs and co-produced solutions alongside the people who traditional services impacted. It was pretty thrilling to hear about those examples, because it indicates to me that we might be able to play with co-production in Ontario to solve some of our complex problems - like health care, poverty/homelessness, and climate change.
I asked Lucie a few questions, and thought I'd share some of her thoughts on them.
On risk
Q: How do you prepare ministers/people accountable for government programs for the potential bad press if something goes wrong?A: Put risk in its place. Lucie said that when nef goes in and helps facilitate a co-produced solution to something, they don't ignore that there's always a risk that things might go wrong. Rather, she turns the question of risk on its head by inviting officials to see firsthand the positive impact that co-produced solutions have on the people effected. I guess what she's saying is they effectively give officials stories to tell in case a bad news story emerges.
For example, in one place where people with dementia and mental illnesses were involved in co-producing a new kind of environment for their care, a press story came out saying that the government was making people with mental illness make their own tea, casting a negative light on what was traditionally a service that service providers delivered. In fact, the people at the residence - professionals providing services and the residents, too - found it was empowering and even good for the health of residents to set their own routine and do things like make their own tea. People with dementia, for example, were shown to benefit.
The more stories that officials can witness firsthand, the better they'll get at taking on the perceived risk of co-produced solutions.
On creating the conditions for co-production
Q: Is it fair to say that support for co-production depends on who's in power or who's elected at the time?A: It helps, but isn't necessary. Lucie said it's definitely easier to develop co-produced solutions when there's top-down leadership and support from officials/commissioners in charge of certain public service files. But where there's a need for it, and passionate practitioners on the ground, co-production will happen.
Lucie says co-production calls for policy-makers to do less in order to create the environment where co-production can thrive at the grassroots. Government should admit to itself that with a lot of these complex problems, it doesn't have all the answers; policy makers need to write public policy as a "discovery tool" - something that can be nimble and change/iterate, as needed.
On government as catalysts of co-production
Q: Do you have any examples where governments or government agencies are using co-production as a new method of service (co-)delivery? Should governments lead the way?A: No, and not necessarily! This one surprised me... Lucie said that it's not always a great idea for governments to lead these kinds of innovative approaches, reason being because, typically, officials in the government aren't close enough to the ground-level to really sense the passion and ability of the grassroots to affect change.
As well, co-production is very much a method/approach that depends on understanding and being in the local context. Lucie gave many examples where co-production worked in small environments. During her presentation at MaRS, she touched upon this point - she said that one of the challenges co-production faces is seeing how it might work on a bigger scale. There aren't really examples of co-production being used for big public programs, or services that effect masses of people, which governments typically deliver.
Thoughts? Ideas?
Our conversation left my head spinning with ideas... what if government re-defined what it means by service delivery? What if governments scaled down its idea of what its role and impact on people should be? How can government foster an environment, through public policy/law, that encourages co-produced solutions to complex problems?So many more questions than that... what do you think?
