CORDIS

COGOV responds to the challenge that European societies are facing a large number of complex (‘wicked’) problems which increasingly require collaborative and innovative solutions, whilst, at the same time, the public sector is caught in a cross-pressure between growing expectations from citizens and scarce public resources in an era of austerity. COGOV also responds to the call in EU Horizon 2020' ‘Understanding the Transformation of European Public Administration’ by exploring participatory practices that are able to generate high levels of civic participation, public engagement and the legitimacy of the decision making and service delivery processes.

In response to these challenges, COGOV aims to locate, explore and diffuse leading edge experiments in new, participatory and user-facing approaches to strategic management and administration that are becoming increasingly evident across various countries in Europe. In doing so, COGOV recognises that such new forms engage citizens, who are necessarily recognised as experts in their own life and who are capable of providing important inputs (in terms of resources, ideas and energy) into the process of public governance.

The key question for COGOV is, how can strategic management enable local governments and public agencies to exploit the drivers - and overcome the barriers - to the co-production or co-creation of innovative public value outcomes at both organizational and project levels, and which lessons can be shared on undertaking strategically managed co-creation?

Organisationally, COGOV will examine the efforts of local governments (and other regional and national public agencies) to transform themselves from ‘bureaucratic authorities’ - treating citizens as legal subjects - and ‘service providers’ - treating citizens as customers - into ‘arenas for co-co-production and co-creation’ in which the citizen emerges as ‘partner’.

The project’s conceptual contribution is to suggest that such wholesale renewal and redesign of public agencies can be best understood through a post-New Public Management strategic management approach. Such an approach will draw upon ‘downwards-facing models of public management including, public value, network governance, digital governance, collaborative leadership and co-governance, co-production and co-creation.

COGOV's key findings are strongly linked to practice and practitioners. At the core of our ambitions are plans to develop an evidence based tool kit for use by practitioners to adapt and improve their day-to-day management practices across Europe.