Crowdsourcing in the Public Sector by Daren C. Brabham

Author:Daren C. Brabham [Brabham, Daren C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Public Affairs & Administration, Civics & Citizenship, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781626162228
Google: MPrOBwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00VNV9KDS
Goodreads: 27069721
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2015-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

Best Practice 2. Determine the level of commitment to the outcomes received

The application of any crowdsourcing process requires an organization to communicate to the online community exactly how much impact user-submitted ideas and labor will have on the organization’s actions. Government agencies should make known upfront the degree to which the online community’s ideas will be put to use. A spectrum for thinking about the level of commitment to crowdsourcing outcomes is shown here, ranging from as-is implementation on one end to viewing crowdsourcing activities as merely consultative (see figure 3.1).

On the as-is implementation end of the spectrum, the government agency is committed to using the online community’s ideas or labor wholesale. This means that in a contest format, the winning idea selected by the online community will be implemented. The benefit here is that by embracing this stance, government is communicating to the online community a level of trust to come up with good ideas, and as a result the level of public participation may be higher because citizens will feel their input will matter. The obvious downside, though, is that the government may not be pleased with the outcome because it may undo effective long-standing policy, is not financially feasible, or is simply nonsense. The Obama Administration faced this problem with the “Citizen’s Briefing Book,” an online initiative to solicit policy proposals from the public between Obama’s election in November 2008 and before he took office in January 2009. More than 1.4 million votes on forty-four thousand proposals led to winning ideas that included legalizing marijuana, legalizing online poker, and revoking the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status; all of those proposals did not align with the Obama Administration’s policy hopes.5 The Obama Administration downplayed the results and was no doubt thankful it had not committed to as-is implementation. Comedian Stephen Colbert has hijacked naming contests for a Hungarian bridge and a NASA module on the International Space Station.6 The Hungarian government reneged when the name “Colbert” won the contest, choosing instead a name that was not even a finalist; NASA also reneged, but it showed a sense of humor by naming a treadmill onboard the Space Station after the comedian.7 It is difficult to identify cases when the government truly committed to an online community’s ideas in an as-is way, though the closest example might be We the People, the Obama Administration’s public petition system. At We the People anyone can create an online petition and any petition gaining a certain number of signatures within a given time frame is guaranteed an official White House response, though critics have noted that the threshold of signatures needed shifts over time.8 While a guaranteed response from the White House for a qualifying petition does not constitute a commitment to pursue the policies proposed in that petition—and it rarely does—the guarantee of an official government response is in the spirit of an as-is implementation.

At the consultative end of the spectrum, government would not make any promise to use any of the ideas that come from a crowdsourcing venture.

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