Co-Production Assessment

Co-production assessment analyses how public services are produced jointly by professional providers and the citizens, clients or communities who use them, rather than delivered to passive recipients. The concept was developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues and sharpened in her 1996 article, which argued that the inputs of "regular producers" such as teachers, police or doctors and those of citizen "co-producers" are often complementary, so that neither can produce the service well alone. The framework assesses what citizens contribute, how their inputs combine with professional inputs, and the conditions under which this combination creates synergy. Its purpose is to identify and strengthen the joint production at the heart of many public services.