The 27th Region and its members: from transaction to cooperation?

This article is part of a series aimed at describing the transformations we are striving to bring about at the 27th Region to cultivate what we believe to be our strength and our purpose: the development of transformative skills, capabilities, and resources within public organizations; the creation and long-term facilitation of coalitions bringing together local governments, private-sector actors, and researchers from different regions, to help them make progress together on a public issue; and the mobilization of multidisciplinary groups that integrate research and action to address increasingly complex challenges and generate actionable knowledge.

At the 27th Region, as you know, the insights and proposals that emerge from our projects are meant to be shared with all public stakeholders, in the spirit of the commons. With all public stakeholders—not just our members, in other words…

And yet, since the association’s founding in 2011, the 27th Region has had many members. Joining the 27th Region is anything but simply having a membership card—the kind that offers exclusive perks without requiring any effort on your part. Joining the 27th Region means participating in its strategic direction and discussions, and taking care of this shared resource by ensuring the diversity of its funding sources. It’s also a first step toward carrying out projects together, as part of our action-research programs.

But over nearly 15 years, just like our areas of focus, our approaches, and the composition of our team, our relationship with our members has changed—it has grown richer and stronger. And while the ever-increasing pressure on local government budgets sometimes leads us to fear an erosion of this precious model, we decided it was time to take a closer look at what this special bond is—and has been—all about…

From the very beginning, one of our main challenges has been to move beyond a client-supplier dynamic and instead establish a balanced, truly collaborative, and long-term relationship with local governments. It may seem like a distant memory today, but it was the regional presidents themselves—Alain Rousset, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and several others—who were the first to support the 27th Region and form its initial group of investors at the time! Their support enabled us to position ourselves as partners rather than service providers, which facilitated dialogue with government agencies and major state operators, and made it easier for us to gain access to conduct our first pilot projects in high schools, train stations, and neighborhoods.

To solidify this partnership-based approach, we chose to operate outside the commercial sphere by not providing any services and not responding to calls for proposals, instead relying on a membership system based on dues for local governments and public agencies. In the early years, our members consisted of about ten regions (there were 26 at the time), and most of our relationships were forged through the projects we carried out together as part of our first programs, “Territoires en Résidence” and then “La Transfo,” which were still partially funded by the ARF (Association of French Regions) and the Caisse des Dépôts, and European funding.

It was following the mixed results (external link)of a state-local government consortium centered on Réacteur public and the overhaul of our governance structure in 2016 (external link) that our membership base began to expand and diversify. It has opened up to other levels of government (departments, cities, metropolitan areas, and urban agglomerations), as well as to public institutions and federal agencies, and even to anyone wishing to get involved individually with the 27th Region (or simply to support it), whether or not they work within a government agency. This also marked the beginning of a fruitful, long-term partnership with the SGMAP (General Secretariat for the Modernization of Public Action) and its successor, the DITP (Interministerial Directorate for Public Transformation).

In 2017, we had around twenty members, a figure that has steadily grown to reach 35-40 institutional members in recent years. This expansion has driven the growth of our work in fostering a community of practitioners and acting as a resource center. We have piloted new formats-such as "Sonar (external link)," a workshop series organized with *France urbaine* to help cities and metropolitan areas chart their own innovation paths, or a dedicated day for sharing experiences and questions among a group of counties pioneering these approaches (external link). Often, based on needs identified with our members, we publish shared resources-including guides, "anti-manuals," and advisory notes-designed to assist public procurement officers issuing tenders for public policy design (external link), or to improve practices regarding user-centric support (external link), among other things. Until 2020, Superpublic-and later Les Halles Civiques-facilitated networking and collective gatherings (this was before COVID and the ubiquity of video conferencing) and provided a welcoming home base for members visiting Paris...

Following the repeated lockdowns of 2020, the ways we interact with our members are evolving. Virtual and hybrid workshops are taking precedence over in-person events. While we inevitably lose some of the conviviality and personal rapport that come with face-to-face meetings, these new formats offer greater flexibility for bringing together people from all corners of France-including the overseas territories. At La 27e Région, we are seizing this opportunity to develop a new format: "member webinars." We host four to six of these a year, covering a wide range of topics. These webinars often stem from a question or an initial idea shared by a member, which we then propose opening up for broader collective discussion. The format is simple and straightforward: two or three carefully selected presentations, testimonials, and case studies (incorporating international perspectives whenever possible), followed by open, informal dialogue among participants-sometimes numbering up to a hundred-and occasionally a call to action to continue exploring the subject in the months ahead. Each webinar is subsequently summarized in a detailed blog post designed for wide sharing and dissemination. Over the years, these webinars have provided our contacts within member local authorities with an opportunity to engage colleagues from other departments and divisions, thereby expanding the internal circle of those benefiting from La 27e Région's resources and networks. Gradually, a relationship of "companionship" is taking shape with our members-a form of alternative, more horizontal knowledge-sharing and training rooted in quality, solidarity, and local culture, transcending organizational charts and geographical boundaries.

Alongside these collective, cross-agency sessions, a practice of regular dialogue with our members is taking firm root. In these interactions, we act as a source of insights and monitoring-sometimes through dedicated sessions sharing "gems" relevant to their current challenges-while also raising awareness, providing guidance, and facilitating networking (connecting them with other local authorities or public bodies, as well as agencies, associations, and researchers active in their fields). It is no easy task to exert a lasting influence on the workings of a local authority with thousands of staff members when operating as a small external entity among hundreds of others. Through these exchanges-conducted alongside specific projects-we aim to build trusting relationships with "change agents" located at the heart of the system and across various levels of the organizational hierarchy. It is a long-term relationship grounded in reciprocity, enabling us to tackle increasingly complex and thorny issues.

Over the years, all these elements have helped foster a community of practice-a safe space that allows for deeper relationships without fostering a "closed-shop" mentality, enabling mutual aid and cooperation on a shared endeavor. This aligns with the view of economist Eloi Laurent, who notes that "cooperation transforms human beings into teachers for one another." As a sociologist who works regularly with us recently put it, La 27e Région is sometimes seen as a sort of "home base" for the hundreds of public servants and professionals committed to an "alternative" transformation of public action. The nature of these relationships is not set in stone; the turnover of our members, the desire to attract others (particularly from smaller local authorities), and the aim to take cooperation even further encourage us to explore new paths. What, for instance, might be achieved through a shared roadmap developed with members from the same territory-at the regional level-consistent with the principles of resource-sharing and local ecosystem development (external link) that we have championed for years?