Public administrators’ perception of ethical issues in public sector co-creation processes and outcomes: A meta-synthesis of cases

This study examines how public administrators perceived ethical issues while developing public services and how they identify and address such issues. We used a mix-method approach to explore the perceptions of ethical challenges from four public administrations that recently adopted co-creation to develop digital public services. We found that the perception of how ethical considerations will impact the success of the co-creation design of public services varies according to the nature and target audience of the public service. In general, ethical considerations are perceived as having a minor impact on co-creation processes, exceptions occurred in projects targeting vulnerable groups. A second finding is that public administrators tend to adopt what we call as precautionary approach regarding ethical issues in the public service. This approach consists in the early identification of potential ethical risks and potential points of conflict with the legal framework governing information sharing (GDPR and local laws). Co-creation plays here an important role as it helps to identify these risks early on. Therefore, special attention must be given to ethical issues regarding co-creation itself. The study enumerates ethical challenges perceived in the co-creation design and implementation of a public service, highlighting the overlap of ethical challenges across these phases. Our findings suggest that the precautionary approach regarding ethics is sufficient to handle potential ethical issues post-implementation.