Reshaping the Hybrid Role of Public Servants:Identifying the Opportunity Space for Co-production and the Enabling Skills Required by Professional Co-producers

This chapter starts by introducing how the public sector has adopted different governance metatrends during the last century and how the adoption of these metatrends over time has led to new, hybrid roles for service users and frontline staff. The focus in this chapter is dedicated to the changing roles of the frontline staff and especially the role ascribed to them as professional coproducers. The premise is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in the local co-production context that is a hybrid of the Old Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance. This complex, hybrid context is framed in the chapter as “the opportunity space for coproduction.” The problem is that this opportunity space represents an arena in which there is potential for the creation of “double or triple pressure” on the professional co-producers because they are expected to handle top-down and bottom-up expectations simultaneously - and perhaps also horizontal pressures stemming from the expectations of staff from other organizations (interorganizational collaborations). The argument is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in this dynamic context, acting together with service users and members from other organizations.</p

Integrated Popular Reporting as a Tool for Citizen Involvement in Financial Sustainability Decisions

The more information that is disseminated about the financial impact of government decisions, the more public sector entities are stimulated to make decisions in a transparent manner. Several tools can be used to involve citizens in financial sustainability decisions; among these, popular reporting is receiving growing attention in the public sector. The goal of popular reporting is to engage the interest of average citizens and make it easy for them to understand financial sustainability, by presenting more information than traditional financial reporting, in a concise, comprehensive, and attractive manner. For these reasons, government entities should consider implementing integrated popular reporting. This chapter aims to present a prototype integrated popular report designed to promote citizen participation in financial sustainability decisions. Through a theoretical-deductive methodology, it aims to identify the main features that an integrated popular report should contain to best respond to the information needs of public sector user groups, focusing on citizens in particular

Building Community and Organisational Capacity to Enable Social Participation for Ageing Australian Rural Populations: A Resource-Based Perspective

In the context of neoliberal approaches to rural service delivery, the role of community organisations in creating social opportunities for ageing populations has long been acknowledged. However, there is little evidence concerning which types of resources diverse rural community stakeholders require to deliver these supports, and how these are accessed in contexts of population growth and ageing. From the Australian perspective, this research identifies how non-declining rural communities are responding to challenges that influence their capacity to enable social participation for older residents. Drawing on interviews with 26 community stakeholders across two rural communities, it explores the interconnectivity among resources that build organisational capacity to deliver social supports in the rural context, and the role and scope of bridging social capital in mobilising these resources. Findings indicate that bridging capital allows diverse rural community groups to access key physical, financial, human or organisational resources, particularly in the context of demand resulting from population ageing and growth. However, there are differences between public sector, large and small voluntary organisations in terms of the types of resources they require, and the contributions made to community bridging capital.</p