Public service is a broad category of careers that include government agencies and programs at the local, state and national level. It also includes nonprofit organizations such as the volunteer fire department and the community food bank that have a mission to serve the needs of their communities. Public service workers may be elected officials such as town mayors, city managers or agency heads. Alternatively, they can be hired employees (civil servants) who work for the federal government.

For example, the Senior Executive Service (SES) is a corps of leaders who possess well-honed executive skills and have a deep commitment to the continued transformation of the Federal Government. SES members, like their colleagues in the rest of the civil service, strive each day to make a more citizen centered and results oriented Federal Government.

Citizens and service users often have specific resources – such as time, expertise, and local knowledge – that can be mobilized in response to contemporary public sector problems, resulting in co-production of critical services involving value co-creation for their own lives (Gronroos 2017). Research has examined which incentives stimulate such participation, with findings indicating that the effectiveness of these instruments depends on how they are promoted, i.e., whether they are individualistic or collective initiatives and if material or intangible incentives are offered (Alford 2002; Andersen et al., 2017; Brudney 1983; Jakobsens 2013; Moseley et al., 2018; Voorberg et al., 2018).

A growing consensus is that a user/citizen-oriented strategic orientation is needed in addition to the internal cost- and competition-orientations prevalent in PAM. This reorientation, based on insights from SM&M, positions user participation as intrinsic to public service production and elevates it as the natural purpose of public service (Osborne 2021).