Social Innovations in Public Services: Co-creation in Slovakia

This paper deals with social innovations in the public sector with emphasis on the plurality system of ownership forms in public service provision which can have several forms: public-private-civil sector mix, partnerships, cooperation and co-creation. The latter is the focus of our study. The objective of this paper is to identify different types of co-creation as the social innovations and relevant drivers and harriers that account for the success or failure of co-creation processes on local government level in Slovakia with focus on the fields of welfare and environment. The research in this study is realized as a part of LAPSE research project. In the qualitative analysis we used the document analysis of relevant policy documents, databases and websites and conducted interviews with various experts on co-creation processes. One of the main findings is that co-creation innovations are mostly proposed by other actors (NGOs and companies, sometimes informal groups of citizens) and not initiated by local governments themselves. Moreover, majority of local governments have usually neutral or even negative attitude to these co-creation innovations what might be due to the tact that Slovakia as a post transitional country has not hilly implemented the principles of modern governance into public administration.