What information and what knowledge?
What kinds of information can be deployed to substantiate claims for the value of co-creation? The question has been an immediate and intense one for the CoSIE project. Simply put the answer depends on the adopted approach to public service mission and governance (of roles, responsibilities and relationships).
We suggest a framework based on social regulation and social cohesion dimensions (Grid & Group Cultural Theory by Douglas, 1970; 1992; 2005) and resulting into 4 types of social organisation and governance – the Fatalist, Hierarchist, Individualist and Egalitarian – for considering different stances towards information and evidence.
The Fatalist way implies strong regulation but public services organised according to professional or administrative convenience, keeping people who use them in a state of dependence where collective action is futile. Information can only ever be made sense of in aftermath so collecting and processing it seem pointless. In advocacy for co-creation it is evoked as an outdated, paternalistic ‘doing to’ the users stance.
The Hierarchist is rule bound with strong collective norms with extremely firm and persistent organisation of public services (with many variants). Characterised by extensive classification, its most typical information manifestation is Key Performance Indicators and similar. Definitions of reality articulated by people who use services are likely to be secondary to those defined by experts.
the Individualist relates to choice and competition. In information terms, this is likely to imply private sector discourses and associated techniques such as customer relationship management.
In the Egalitarian model, as in co-creation, citizens who use services and workers who produce them become jointly responsible for decision-making and delivering outcomes. The user perspective is important in assessing the relations, processes and outcomes. Because local level collective relationships matter so much, information is highly entangled in its context. Both professionals’ and users’ knowledge matters. From a community development perspective, Storytelling is one of the most important tools for hearing what matters to people (Cottam, 2018). Storytelling curated in digital form and mobilised for change is a key contribution of CoSIE.
Below you find a conversation among scholars on what information you need to evaluate co-creation.