Platforms for participation

In the UK, pressure on public services continues to grow and levels of trust and engagement in the public realm have decreased over successive decades. Ironically, the internet may well have contributed to both trends by enabling greater access to knowledge and the exchange of views while at the same time allowing commercial businesses to provide higher levels of service with greater ‘production values’ – raising the game for government.

The political and economic arguments for citizen (re)engagement and the design of public services that are a better response to the needs of people rather than organisations have been made well in recent years. Actually achieving this means that government needs to make the critical shift in mind set from the organisational view to seeing services (and living) as people do. Designing services that are in more meaningful ways, citizen-centred, means adopting new methods and new organisational models. And critically, learning new ways to actively involve citizen service users and front line professionals in the process of policy making and service design.

Co-design and co-production of services means going further than simply consulting citizens (and overcoming consultation fatigue). To succeed in designing great services and delivering excellent customer service public sector service organisations must work collaboratively with citizens. This means giving citizens (and not just those traditionally deemed to be service users) the means to amplify their voice; it also means thinking about engagement in policy making and service design as coherent public services in their own right.

Service designers can help by designing useful, usable and desirable platforms for engagement that themselves respond to what motivates different groups to get involved. Co-design with users and front line professionals means designing collaborative processes - not just consultations – and building services and brands around them. This way, people are far more likely to take responsibility for the process and ownership of the outcomes.

The internet has without doubt changed the ways that many of us live our lives. Email, online shopping and free and open access to knowledge and entertainment have allowed people to operate socially, commercially and creatively outside of the structures of traditional institutions like never before. The internet has made collaboration possible in ways that weren’t previously, leading to new cultural forms, new communities of interest, new ways of solving problems and increased direct action. The ease and speed at which people can share their experiences has reduced the opacity of institutions including governments resulting in greater scrutiny of government by government.

Resources
The Journey to the Interface
National Consumer Council
BBC Action Network
Royal Society for the Arts
Together we can
Communities of practice for local government
Voices and choices
Strong and Prosperous Communities