MCRIT co-creation approach

Currently, policy-support and collective decision-making requires new ways of knowledge production and decision-making processes. Beyond gathering collective intelligence, there is a need to reconcile values and preferences, as well as create common understanding of problems and opportunities, and finally a sense of ownership for policy options.

The role of citizens in public service innovation or in co-creating public policy does not have the same history as that one of the private sector, where across different industries, customers have played a crucial role in suggesting improvements, new features, new options for existing services or products. However, if one looks back into history, citizen participation goes back to ancient Greece and Colonial New England. Before the 1960s, governmental processes and procedures were designed to facilitate “external” participation.

Today’s plea about citizen engagement in policy making departs from the very essence that citizens are the key “experts” and not the public servants sitting in their offices.