This week we would like to present you another good practice identified by partners participating in the Arctic Cooperation funded ARCTIC PACER clustering project.
This time, the best practice, a methodology, comes from the already completed IMPROVE project (funded by Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme 2014-2020). The IMPROVE methodology was developed by the project partnership to guide regions in the process of co-producing new services with their communities in a living lab environment.
The IMPROVE methodology provides a framework to guide those organisations that want to involve their communities in the definition and provision of the public services. It presents a 5-step approach and stresses on the importance of empowering intermediary facilitators (called local champions) as key actors in the process. These local champions can include civil servants, community managers, volunteers, social enterprises workers, planners and others depending on the service provided.
The goals of the Co-Production Methodology are:
- Establish the innovative living lab ecosystem formed by all the relevant stakeholders.
- Effectively carry out the needed adaptation and organizational change in each stakeholder.
- Provide the public services providers (civil servants, community managers, volunteers, social enterprises, etc) with the necessary tools and skills to act as local champions leading the process of co-producing the new services.
- Engage and involve the community.
- Co-produce user-centred, inclusive, responsive and transparent services.
Furthermore, this methodology includes a transnational dimension and also provides guidance for the establishment of the IMPROVE transboundary living lab and how the participating regions can have access to other centres of knowledge.