On Co-Production

William Tobin, Ph.D./ October 25, 2019/ Blog/ 0 comments

On Co-Production

For the past year or two several project teams here in the Lab have been thinking about a puzzle related to outcomes:  How to describe their part in bringing about important policies or initiatives when they have played a significant role in collaboration with government?

The Lab isn’t the only organization that is outcome driven. I recently had a conversation with a colleague in Dublin, Ireland who has works for NGO in the public health sector. She described being called out of the blue by an aid to a member of the Seanad, the upper chamber of Ireland’s national legislature, asking for her thoughts on a women’s health issue that she knew well.   After a lengthy conversation, she did not hear anything further from the aid. But eighteen months later, national legislation was passed that contained the exact words she had spoken in the phone call.  I know,” she told me,” the law wasn’t mine, but I also know I played in an important part in shaping the law. “How to talk about that role?

Two teams in the Lab have been asking themselves a similar question. The Lab’s transportation team played a decisive role in the placement of dozens of semi-seats around the city by the Department of Transportation and Go Triangle. The Lab surveyed riders, built and placed our own DIY bus seating to create momentum for change, wrote an op-ed when our seats were removed, and then transit officials got the message we met with them to identify sites for the simple, easy to install two-person seats.

Similarly, the Lab’s Education team spent four months working with Durham Public School officials to ensure that an incredibly determined high school junior, two years removed from a Rwandan refugee camp, receive the time accommodations for the ACT test that he was entitled to. Then they convinced Durham Public Schools that they should offer the same accommodations to the more than 300 ELL juniors who were taking the ACT this year and then helped develop a protocol to deliver these accommodations.

What is the correct verb to describe our contribution to these outcomes that neither under or overstate our role? After much thought we have begun talking about “co-producing” outcomes with the school district and transit authorities While we sometimes worry that this sounds a bit presumptuous, we have come to believe that the term captures our effort go beyond advocacy and bring knowledge to bear on community challenges.

--Bill Tobin

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