Public value and procedural policy instrument specifications in “design for service”

Abstract

Strokosch and Osborne and others have recently argued the

essence of effective service delivery in and by government increas-

ingly involves the re-orientation of top-down service delivery

toward enhanced co-design and co-creation. This new emphasis

on what Strokosch and Osborne term designing and managing

“for” services is seen to be increasingly replacing or augmenting an

older emphasis on these tasks in the design “of” services. Analyzing

and managing service design and delivery in this way, however,

requires a steady eye to be maintained on the different ways in

which “public value” is generated through each service process and

upon the different kinds of policy tools useful in each activity. This

paper expands and develops this thinking and the research and

practice agenda around this emergent “designing for service” para-

digm. It does so by focusing on the nature and types of substan-

tive and procedural policy tools used in these efforts and especially

upon a shift in emphasis toward the better understanding of the

micro-level specifications of the procedural instruments used in

management and design “for” services.