Exploring three rich cases across three countries, this book shows how government organizations need their clients to contribute time and effort to co-producing public services, and how organizations can better elicit this work from them, by providing good client service and appealing to their intrinsic needs and social values.

With over three decades of experience in public sector HR, Bob Lavigna gives managers the tools they need to leverage the talents of government's most important resource: its people. You know firsthand that your government workers are not underworked, overpaid, or mindless clones just carrying out the morally compromised work that politicians forced through the pipeline. Besides having to daily overcome the persona of being a government employee, your hard-working employees face enormous pressures and challenges every day and are asked to solve some of our country’s toughest problems, including unemployment, security, poverty, and education. To be able to return to their desks daily with the passion and commitment required to accomplish these overwhelming duties will require a manager who knows how to leverage talent, improve performance, and inspire passion within these true servants. In Engaging Government Employees, you will learn: Why a highly engaged staff is 20 percent more productive How to get employees to deliver “discretionary effort” How to assess the level of engagement Why free pizza and Coke every Friday is not a viable strategy Engaging Government Employees rejects the typical one-size-fits-all approach to motivation. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence, this indispensable resource shows how America’s largest employer can apply the science of engagement to get team members passionate about the agency’s mission and committed to its success.

In a time of unprecedented turbulence, how can public sector organisations increase their ability to find innovative solutions to society's problems? Leading Public Sector Innovation shows how government agencies can use co-creation to overcome barriers and deliver more value, at lower cost, to citizens and business. Through inspiring global case studies and practical examples, the book addresses the key triggers of public sector innovation. It shares new tools for citizen involvement through design thinking and ethnographic research, and pinpoints the leadership roles needed to drive innovation at all levels of government. Leading Public Sector Innovation is essential reading for public managers and staff, social innovators, business partners, researchers, consultants and others with a stake in the public sector of tomorrow.

For almost a half a century, scholars and practitioners have debated what the connections should be between public administration and the public. Does the public serve principally as citizen-owners, those to whom administrators are responsible? Are members of the public more appropriately viewed as the customers of government? Or, in an increasingly networked world, do they serve more as the partners of public administrators in the production of public services? This book starts from the premise that the public comes to government not principally in one role but in all three roles, as citizens and customers and partners. The purpose of the book is to address the dual challenge that reality implies: (1) to help public administrators and other public officials to understand the complex nature of the public they face, and (2) to provide recommendations for how public administrators can most effectively interact with the public in the different roles. Using this comprehensive perspective, Citizen, Customer, Partner helps students, practitioners, and scholars understand when and how the public should be integrated into the practice of public administration. Most chapters in Citizen, Customer, Partner include multiple boxed cases that illustrate the chapter’s content with real-world examples. The book concludes with an extremely useful Appendix that collects and summarizes the 40 Design Principles – specific advice for public organizations on working with the public as customers, partners, and citizens.

How can governments reduce workforce costs while ensuring civil servants remain engaged and productive? This report addresses this question, using evidence from the 2014 OECD Survey on Managing Budgeting Constraints: Implications for HRM and Employment in Central Public Administration.

This book examines the various ways in which co-production can contribute to the creation, design, and delivery of public services, namely by engaging the expertise of users and their networks, by promoting public services that are better targeted and more responsive to users, by cutting costs against the background of austerity in public finance, by creating a synergy between government and civil society that will impact positively on social capital, and by addressing the challenges resulting from growing democratic and citizenship deficits. Particular attention is paid to local government and the health and social care sector. After definition of the concept of co-production, the critical issues which arise when public services are co-produced are discussed. Various experiences of co-production are presented and analyzed with a view to highlighting why, how, and with what effect public service co-production may be implemented. Individual chapters focus on the impact of co-production in making cities smarter and the use of ICT in supporting co-production of public services. The book will be of relevance to a wide readership, from students to academics and professionals interested or engaged in public service management.