The Challenge of Co-Production

This paper provides the basis for both a better understanding and stronger evidence base for co-production.

Given the current diversity of uses of the term, this paper also explains what co-production isn’t.

It demonstrates why, properly understood, co-production looks set to create the most important revolution in public services since the Beveridge Report in 1942.

It diagnoses why public services reform is stalled, and why a radically new approach – sharing the design and delivery of services with users – can break this logjam and make services more effective for the public, more cost effective for policy makes and more sustainable for all.