Internet technology is an ideal choice to connect people and to bring people together for a common goal. In other words: to mobilize the crowd. The government could also benefit from the crowd, there is a lot to win on that field!
The Dutch government is already using the crowd, on a small scale. A good example is Amber Alert, this is an initiative which allows citizens to help tracing missing persons. The last few years have showed that this is a good initiative, because it works well.
The current technology allows us to provide a voluntary contribution to society, which is not very difficult to do. Namely, you can divide all of the tasks in to micro tasks. An example: Fixi. Fixi is a mobile app, which helps people to contribute to a good condition of the public space. Users can take a picture of a problem, such as a broken pit or a fallen tree, and send this picture to the app. This notification will immediately appear in the back office of the concerned town, so that they can solve this problem. The citizens can later on tell the other people on the app that the problem is indeed solved. I think this is a great example of how governments could benefit from the crowd, by mobilizing the people. Everyone can participate in its own way, by only looking at the problems other people send in or by sending their own problems. This means there is no pressure, but if you participate you get the feeling that you have been useful for your town. Furthermore, I think this fits the goals of a lot of governments. They want to fill the gap between government and citizens, and isn’t this the perfect way to do so?
Thousands of people that voluntary contribute to society will create a lot of benefits for the government, if they are able to use it well. With the current technologies it is possible!
I am curious about your opinions and if you could come up with more examples. Do you think there are more ways for the government to make clever use of the crowd? Or do you think this is not a good way to fill the gap between government and citizens?
For more information about Fixi, take a look at the video below. I’m sorry this is in Dutch, but only looking at it and not reading the attached text is enough to understand the idea of the app, I think!
Website Dutch Cowboys, ahttp://www.dutchcowboys.nl/online/tip-voor-de-overheid-gebruik-de-crowd, accessed at 21th Oktober 2015
Hello Jackie, I found your post very interesting. Crowdsourcing is indeed a powerful tool to reach out and leverage citizen knowledge and I don’t see why governments should’t take advantage of it. We could actually think of many opportunities for governments to use such mechanism. For instance, government could use volunteers to identify documents from the National Archives or to build up a memorial. Governments could also implement crowdsourcing in the medical sector or administration services by simply asking for feedback. Hence, governments could greatly improve their services at a little cost. However, it seems obvious that for some activities, governments won’t be willing to share information with the public. Last but not least, to make crowdsourcing efficient, reward is key. Hence, governments will have to find crowdsourcing procedures that will differ from classical ones ( mainly private), but remain efficient and keeps delivering solutions. I’m very curious to see the further innovations and evolutions on this matter.