Tag Archives: crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing in smart cities: a world of best practice

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By Steven McGinty

Too often, debates on smart cities revolve around terms such as “Internet of things”, “big data”, and “sensors”. However, there is a growing realisation that truly smart cities take a more person-centric approach, which focuses on the needs of citizens and harnesses their skills, talents and experience.

Crowdsourcing is one approach that can help cities do just that. From Danish toy maker Lego to tech giant Amazon, organisations are using digital tools to gather views, opinions, data, and even money from citizens. Public sector institutions have also got involved, introducing projects that engage with citizens, as well as tap into external skills through events such as hackathons (where civic hackers come together to solve key city problems).

Already, there is a wide range of crowdsourcing initiatives across the world. Below I’ve highlighted some of the best.

Scottish Government

In 2015, the Scottish Government’s Open Data and Fisheries teams introduced Dialogue, a citizen engagement tool developed by Delib (a social enterprise based in the UK and Australia).

The Open Data team were in the process of creating an open data plan for public bodies. They felt that crowdsourcing could help them gain a greater understanding of the types and formats of datasets people would be interested in, and as such, posed a series of questions to citizens.

The Fisheries Team took to crowdsourcing to gather the views on a proposal to create a ‘kill licence’ and carcass tagging regime for salmon. As they knew this would be controversial, they wanted to gain a better understanding of the concerns in fishing communities, and to see if there were any better approaches.

Both teams learned a lot of useful lessons from the process. These included:

  • ensuring questions were as specific as possible so citizens could understand;
  • marketing projects to specific communities with an interest in the question raised;
  • avoiding making assumptions or stereotyping audiences; and
  • giving short deadlines (as this added urgency and encouraged greater participation).

Milton Keynes

MK: Smart – Milton Keynes’ wide ranging smart cities programme – has introduced an online platform known as Our MK to connect with citizens. This award-winning project supports people in playing a central role in urban innovation, from crowdsourcing initial ideas through to finding mentoring support and funding through their dedicated SpaceHive page.

The platform’s citizen ideas competition offers up to £5,000 worth of funding to turn ideas into reality. So far it’s generated over 100 ideas, with 13 projects being allocated funding. This includes the Go Breastfeeding MK App (an app which promotes the use of breastfeeding within Milton Keynes) and the gamification of Redways (which saw an app developed to encourage people to explore the Redways network – a series of shared use paths for cyclists and pedestrians.)

Madrid City Council

In 2016, Madrid City Council launched Decide Madrid. The platform played a key role in supporting the city’s participatory budgeting process, allowing citizens to propose, debate, and rank ideas submitted to the website. Once citizens had chosen their top proposals, city employees checked the ideas against viability criteria and a cost report was carried out. If the proposal failed to meet the criteria, a report was published explaining why it had been excluded.

Decide Madrid provided guidance of what was allowed and what was not (offline meetings were also used to explain the limitations of the scheme), to ensure that only valid proposals were checked. This ensured the initiative didn’t become too labour intensive.

In the 2016 Budget, €60 million was set aside. By the time the process had finished, citizens had debated over 5,000 initial ideas, with 225 projects being chosen for funding.

Reykjavik City Council

Better Reykjavik was introduced to provide a direct link for citizens to Reykjavik City Council. The online platform enables citizens to voice, debate and prioritise the issues that they believe will improve their city. For example, Icelandic school children have suggested the need for more field trips.

In 2010, the platform played an important role in Reykjavik’s city council elections, providing a space for all political parties to crowdsource ideas for their campaign. After the election, Jón Gnarr, former Mayor of Reykjavik, encouraged citizens to use the platform during coalition talks. Within a four week period (before and after the election), 40% of Reykjavik’s voters had used the platform and almost 2000 priorities had been created.

Overall, almost 60% of citizens have used the platform, and the city has spent approximately £1.7 million on developing projects sourced from citizens.

Final thoughts

Crowdsourcing is more than just creating a flashy website or app. It’s a process which requires strategic planning and investment. If you’re planning your own initiative, seeking out good practice and learning from the experience of others is a great place to start.

This article was based on the briefing ‘The crowdsourced city: engaging citizens in smart cities’. Idox Information Service members can access this briefing via our customer website.

Top 5 crowdsourcing initiatives in government: better engagement with citizens

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By Steven McGinty

The first mention of ‘crowdsourcing’ was in 2006 by Jeff Howe, in an article in Wired magazine. His article highlighted the basic premise that technology has enabled us to ‘source’ ideas, labour, and opinions from a potentially large group of people.

Initially used in business, the idea of crowdsourcing has now been applied in government and in a policy context. And although involving people in government is not a new idea, innovative technologies have reduced costs and increased the reach of traditional participation methods, such as town hall meetings. Vili Lehdonvirta and Jonathan Bright, academics at the Oxford Internet Institute, suggest that the unique ability to source a large pool of opinions or ideas has a quality of its own.

With the growing demand for greater transparency and democratic participation, and an increasingly tech savvy population, it’s likely that crowdsourcing will become more prevalent in public decision-making. For that reason, I’ve decided to highlight some of the most interesting examples of government crowdsourcing platforms.

Our MK

Our MK is an online citizen engagement platform, which is part of MK: Smart – a collaborative initiative to turn Milton Keynes into a “Smart City”. The Open University, a major partner in the initiative, explains that smart cities participate in “ICT-led urban innovation that addresses sustainability issues”. The Our MK project enables the local community to put forward their ideas, start their own sustainability projects, and volunteer for projects that already exist, such as the Food Waste Juice Bar or the Breastfeeding Hub App. Overall, the scheme has been a success, with thousands of citizens innovating, collaborating, and building projects.

Better Reykjavik

Better Reykjavik is an online platform that has been developed to provide a direct link for citizens to Reykjavik City Council. It enables citizens to voice, debate and prioritise the issues that they believe will improve their city. For example, school children have suggested the need for more field trips.

In 2010, the platform played an important role in Reykjavik’s city council elections; providing a space for all political parties to crowdsource ideas for their campaign. After the election, Jón Gnarr, former Mayor of Reykjavik, encouraged citizens to use the platform during coalition talks. Within a four week period (before and after the election), 40% of Reykjavik’s voters had used the platform and almost 2000 priorities had been created.

Since its introduction, almost 60% of citizens have used the platform, and the city has spent 1.9 million euros on developing projects sourced from citizens.

Citizens’ Initiative Act

In 2012, the Finnish government introduced the Citizens’ Initiative Act, with the purpose of increasing participation of the under 40’s – a demographic where less than half chose to vote in elections. It enshrines into Finnish law a mechanism for allowing citizens to have their say in the legislation debated in parliament. However, before an initiative can progress, a minimum of 50,000 statements of support need to be gathered from voting age Finnish citizens.

From a technical perspective, citizens have been crowdsourced using open source software designed by the Open Ministry, a non-profit organization based in Helsinki, Finland.

The initiative has been used to gather views on a number of issues, including the first equal marriage law in 2014 (where citizens were involved in collecting signatures as well as drafting legislation), and in 2013 the off-road traffic law reform (which focuses on where and how fast snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles can be ridden).

Future Melbourne

Future Melbourne is an interesting project by the City of Melbourne Council, which asks its citizens to help write the city plan. The wiki (a website which allows collaboration), which was launched in 2008, encourages citizens to share ideas and to edit the content of the Future Melbourne draft plan. Tietoja Minusta, a Finnish academic, suggests that this was possibly the first online community consultation that focused on large-scale city planning.

The project has now moved into a new phase with the latest iteration, Future Melbourne 2026. Some of the key issues up for discussion include facilities for the homeless, the use of arts to promote equity and inclusion, and smarter public transport.

Simplicity

In 2011, New York City launched ‘Simplicity’, an internal crowdsourcing project to harness the knowledge and experience of its employees to improve efficiency. The city used a social networking platform provided by Spigit – a tech company specialising in these types of tools. During the test phase of the project, a number of suggestions were made, including a web-based portal for items made redundant by other agencies, and a web-based help desk for employees looking to contact other employees with a particular expertise.

Final thoughts

These are just some of the many crowdsourcing initiatives introduced by governments, and although there has been some debate about their effectiveness, it’s clear that they tap into wider popular trends, such as the sharing economy. Whether it’s citizens having their say in city planning or having their questions read out in Prime Minister’s Questions, it’s likely that crowdsourcing will continue to play a role in government.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in policy and practice are interesting our research team. 

Further reading: if you liked this blog post, you might also want to read our other articles on digital issues.

Smart citizens, smarter state: from open government to smarter governance

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By Steven McGinty

Last year, a poll by Ipsos Mori found that only 16% of the British public trust politicians to tell the truth. Although scepticism is healthy for a democracy, these figures are significantly lower than in 1986, when 38% of the public trusted MPs “to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party”

The British Social Attitudes survey attributes this decline in public confidence to the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal. However, a more general dissatisfaction with institutions (the media, the police, and financial institutions) – who have all had their own scandals – may also be a factor.

With this decline in trust, it’s not too surprising that the British public are calling for greater transparency and more ‘open government’.

What is open government?

According to Professor Beth Simone Noveck’s book, ‘Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing’, open government involves moving away from a ‘closed-door model’ of governance to one where government institutions connect with people and organisations from a diverse range of backgrounds. This includes citizens, academics, voluntary organisations and the commercial sector.

Examples of citizen involvement

The commercial sector has already benefited from greater citizen involvement. For instance, Facebook, which relies heavily on its 1.44 billion monthly users to generate content, is valued at over $300 billion. This is three or four times more than traditional US media companies such as CBS and Viacom. Netflix, a global streaming service for movies and TV series, also sought to benefit from outside talent by offering a million dollars to researchers who could improve their ability to make recommendations for their subscribers.

However, it’s not just about the commercial sector. Galaxy Zoo, an online citizen science project, has been very successful thanks to its pool of ‘citizen scientists’, who help translate raw information into useful scientific knowledge. In its first year, the project created 50 million ‘classifications’. To date, the project has published 48 articles using the data classified by volunteers.

Benefits of open government

In her book, Professor Noveck includes an example of how government might reduce reoffending. She explains that to initially understand the problem data scientists are required to interpret the data. Legal scholars, practitioners and victims’ groups are also needed to help understand the practical realities of the criminal justice system.  Using this scenario, she describes how professionals, such as psychologists and social scientists could design pilot projects to reduce reoffending.

Professor Noveck argues that increasing openness could provide greater insights and a more legitimate form of government. She suggests that open government has the potential to restore trust in public institutions.

Failure of open government

In 2010, the Coalition Government consulted the public on its programme for government. The website received a total of 9,500 official responses; although no government policies were changed as a result.

At the time, The Guardian described this as a failure, and Simon Burall, Director of Involve, a group advising bodies on consultation, warned that

“You have to give the government some credit for trying to do this, but badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all. They diminish trust and reduce the prospect that people will engage again.”

Although a proponent for more open governance, Professor Noveck concedes that government initiatives to involve citizens, like the one introduced by the previous UK government, have failed.  She claims that the ad-hoc nature of these programmes and the long standing culture of closed-door practices present major barriers.

Smarter governance

Therefore, Professor Noveck advocates a move towards, what she calls, ‘smarter governance’. In essence, this means that institutions should look to target and match specific people with the right opportunities – which is now possible thanks to ‘technologies of expertise’. Well known platforms such as LinkedIn allow individuals to be found based on their particular skills. And online learning platforms such as the Khan Academy provide ‘badges’ to indicate the mastery of skills.

In the UK, the app GoodSAM, which evolved from London’s Air Ambulance service, is designed to alert approved medical professionals when an emergency is nearby, so that potentially lifesaving treatment can be administered.

In the US, the New York Police department maintains a database of its employees’ abilities, ranging from language skills to hobbies, such as yoga or beekeeping. The department takes the tasks of collating skills very seriously, with all new recruits completing a form as part of the human resources process. Having this knowledge allows senior officers to make better use of their staff abilities, and provide a better service.

Conclusions – “More Minecraft, less statecraft”

Professor Noveck concludes her book by calling for positive steps to ensure that institutions not only listen to advisory boards and formal committees, but also include the citizen experience and wider expertise. She recommends that there should be a diverse range of conversations between government and its citizens, and that reinventing the processes of decision making should be a matter of urgency.

The Idox Information Service includes a traditional library service offering a range of physical books, documents and reports.  The book, ‘Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing’, by Professor Beth Simone Noveck, is the latest addition to our collection, and can be borrowed by Information Service members.  If you would like to subscribe to the Information Service please contact us at AskTheResearchTeam@idoxgroup.com