Abstract:

The research aim of the paper was to check whether cooperation of citizens with public institutions in Poland fulfills the concept of co-creation of public services. To achieve the goal following research tasks has been implemented: i) to identify the legal solutions of citizens cooperation, ii) to identify public institutions cooperating with citizens and areas of cooperation, iii) to identify amount and structure of transfers form public institutions towards legal solutions of citizens cooperation, iv) to identify difficulties in cooperation between public institutions and citizens. It has been reviled that despite the fact that for eight years the local community and its residents have been able to solve problems of their surroundings using a local initiative, the available data show that only a small part of municipalities undertook tasks together with the residents, and the awareness of the residents themselves regarding the possibility of using of this form, especially in smaller communes, is still small. On the other hand, more popular are forms where the participation of residents ends with the submission of an idea, without the direct participation of residents, i.e. the village council fund and the civic budget. Due to the fact that the participation of residents in the local initiative is much greater than in the case of the village council fund and the civic budget, it should be stated that the local initiative corresponds to a greater extent to the idea of co-creation of public services. The research years cover mainly 2014-2020. In the paper following research methods has been used: analysis of scientific literature and normative documents, comparative analysis, statistical analysis.