CHANGE! Social design of public services

How did the story start with the CHANGE! network? Why did your city decide to set up an URBACT Action Planning Network?

The City of Eindhoven realized in the last years that it is high time for changing and having a new approach in public service due to the above mentioned reasons. Eindhoven, the “city of innovation,” therefore launched a 2-year long social policy experimentation programme entitled WeEindhoven in the beginning of 2015. Within the new system, WeTeams were established in the neighbourhoods representing a kind of one-stop-shop. WeTeams consist of generalists, who are well connected to the neighbourhood. Each citizen meets one generalist, who focuses on strengthening the talents of the citizen and also the strengths of their social network. The generalist always stimulates the person (client needing help) first to find a solution for their question alone or with the support of their social network - this is called social basis, which is the key in the process.

We want to explore different possibilities how to strengthen the social basis. The centre of our approach is the citizen, so we are mostly interested in how to empower citizens to co-produce public (mainly social) services. European exchange can provide new insights. During a meeting of the Eurocities Social Affairs Forum the director of the Social Department was informed about the upcoming URBACT III Programme and she asked the Strategy Department to investigate the possibilities joining to the programme.

What is the main policy and thematic challenge you would like to address in the network? Is this a political priority at local level?

Collaborative public services need delivery models that engage citizens more actively. Engaging citizens in public services is about unlocking their knowledge, skills and personal experience. The focal point here is the resident, its capabilities and relationships (social networks). Within the recent public service model capabilities are too often blocked, and the citizen is too often in a passive role while claiming a benefit or a service. On the other hand, the capability to build up and sustain relationships has been complicated by modern life customs as well: changing family structures, geographic dislocation, disappearing borders between work and family life, the way how we use new communication techniques, etc. The results are costly in terms of depression, other mental illnesses and social exclusion. The lens of relationships offers a powerful critique to the traditional policy-based, service mentality as well.

The central idea of WeEindhoven is that where people meet, initiatives arise from a shared interest and passion, and residents are willing to help each other with questions and answers, but also by providing voluntary work.

By strengthening the social basis people will be more able to utilize their own strengths and network and therefore be more self-reliant. The ideal is to strengthen the social basis in a way which results in a more inclusive society where everyone can live, work, meet and relax.

This inevitably needs a culture shift, which requires an open dialogue between government, front line officers and citizens on the intended outcome, a deep dialogue about the roles citizens can take over, and the support needed to achieve it. “The job of government is not to specify which sector should deliver which service to which people; rather, it is to create an open framework within which people have the power to make the choices that are best for them, and where all good, innovative ideas for improving the quality of services are welcomed and encouraged” (The Community Right to Challenge, UK).

Strengthening the Social Basis is part of the work programme of Eindhoven’ Mayoral Committee (mayor and aldermen) for the period 2014-2018. In Dutch this work programme is called: Expeditie Eindhoven iedereen mee. This is in the centre of our exchange and learning activities.

Why did you choose to address this problem in the framework of an URBACT network?

Eindhoven is also known about its development strategy entitled as Brainport. Eindhoven consciously collects knowledge through cooperation projects. The main reason behind the choice was that URBACT provides exchange and learning on European level, it supports urban issues, and finally, it also provides a serious level of thematic expertise. In addition to this, the emphasis on URBACT Local Groups also meets local expectations, as the core group around the local initiative has been already working.

What concrete results do you expect to achieve through this URBACT network?

We intend to use the Integrated Action Plan, as main local output of the URBACT network, to generate an open discussion about the future of the local WeEindhoven initiative, focusing on how to strengthen the social basis. A multi-stakeholder action planning process is also welcomed in the city as the stakeholder group linked to WeEindhoven is relatively new, so hopefully the work within URBACT makes this local network stronger.

CHANGE!’s main goal is to identify different parameters and model different pathways for culturally different cities enabling them to move forward towards a collaborative public service model. On the network level, thus the learning process itself will be very interesting, as this innovative topic is almost completely untouched in more centralised countries. Therefore we are very curious about how other participants will react to our initiative. The main outcome of the network is the establishment of a European movement of cities supporting the shift towards a more collaborative service provision or even more specific, towards people-powered public services. 

How did you set up your initial partnership? Why did you choose these partners?

Firstly we made a desk research about different initiatives (e.g. participative budget), which can be interesting for us, for the development of the theme. We also used the experience of Eindhoven’s European office in Brussels. We selected partners of which we thought we could learn from. Finally, we went to the URBACT City Festival in Riga to identify other possible partners.

One of your tasks will be to complete the partnership from your current number of partners to up to 12 partners, how are you going to proceed?

We are focusing on a content-wise selection process, as we need experienced cities due to the topic. In this way hopefully we can involve cities from Scandinavia as well as from Germany. Of course we received lots of interests from the four corners of Europe, this is a big help regarding the involvement of less developed cities, which is even problematic in our case, as opening public services is an unknown experience in many countries.