Co-Design in co-production processes: jointly articulating and appropriating infrastructuring and commoning with civil servants

Abstract

The public sector, increasingly acknowledging a need for change but strongly influenced by market logics, is experimenting with new forms of co-production of public services based on collaborations between public providers, citizens and societal actors. At the same time, Co-design researchers, are using approaches of infrastructuring and commoning to navigate questions of participation and collaboration in co-production. By discussing the case of ReTuren, a co-produced service for waste handling and prevention, this article presents how infrastructuring and commoning can offer guidance to civil servants engaging in coproduction. In the case, civil servants on an operational level and an 'embedded' co-design researcher worked side-by-side in the co-production of the service, jointly articulating and appropriating approaches of infrastructuring and commoning. The case reveals that the joint appropriation and articulation of these co-design approaches can lead to the development of new ways of operating and perspectives in the public sector. However, it also highlights that this joint effort needs to involve people across organizational levels in order to minimize possible contextual and worldview breakdowns within public organizations.

Infrastructuring Public Consultation in Town Planning— How Town Planners Translate Public Consultation into a Socio-Technical Support System

“…We would suggest that, in the absence of technical silver bullets, planners need to be supported to take active charge of their role as infrastructural agents, and to see 'infrastructuring' as part of participatory design to shape their consultation practices. Approaches to participatory design could facilitate an open exploration of the "adaptation and appropriation" of software within local policy frames and constraints around planners (compare Seravalli et al 2017). However, in the long run, this approach will likely not overcome the lack of suitable software for public consultation.…”

“…Research studies have also emphasised institutional arenas by incorporating the notion of 'levels' in their methodology, such as Agid (2018) who analysed practices at a 'local level' and at a 'larger level of policing'; or Seravalli et al (2017) who focused on 'operational' and 'management level'. Institutional approaches have been traditionally associated with studies of governance, and this approach is complementary to studies on public consultation practice.…”

“…Institutional approaches have been traditionally associated with studies of governance, and this approach is complementary to studies on public consultation practice. Related studies typically recognise the institutional processes set forth by law that influences practice (compare Huybrechts et al 2017;Lyle et al 2018;Seravalli et al 2017). Here, 'infrastructuring' has also been used to refer to efforts that build relations between stakeholders (Seravalli et al 2017), and where software use is implied, the effort to negotiate common objectives.…”

“…Related studies typically recognise the institutional processes set forth by law that influences practice (compare Huybrechts et al 2017;Lyle et al 2018;Seravalli et al 2017). Here, 'infrastructuring' has also been used to refer to efforts that build relations between stakeholders (Seravalli et al 2017), and where software use is implied, the effort to negotiate common objectives. For example, Lyle et al (2018, p. 2) citing Huybrechts et al (2017) states that "a focus on institutions goes hand-in-hand with the participatory design of digital technologies".…”

Urban nature as transformed practice – A case of multi-dimensional processing to increase public value in Copenhagen

“…turnover, income, tax value, or investments), and social factors (e.g. equal distribution of the economic benefits gained from investing in sustainability) (C40 Cities, 2018:3); and (4) the material context in which actors create urban nature-based solutions: the biotically/abiotically shared space of non-humans, the sociality of human-centred commons (Lazzarato, 2002; Ostrom, 2010), the social-economic field of policy-/political institutions, and the more environmental/economic negotiated fields of sustainability.…”