Managed to catch Radio 4’s Click On program on Monday 28th March 2011. There was an item about the failure to date of crowdsourcing, not just in the UK where the government having made a big thing about it post-election, now seems to have dropped its use.
The one successful use mentioned was in New York, but in national government both sides of the Atlantic, it has turned out to be a bit of a joke. It would appear that many politicians don’t like the results it throws up!
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citizen, Social media | Tagged: Click On, Crowdsourcing, Radio 4 | 
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Posted by greatemancipator
Patrick Wintour reported in The Guardian (2 August 2010) on the “Coalition’s first crowdsourcing attempt fails to alter Whitehall line” and Chris Williams in The Register (3 August 2010) noted that “UK.gov smiles and nods at commentards”. Both these pieces pick up on the fact that nothing is apparently changing at Whitehall despite the coalitions stated aims to crowdsource ideas for savings.
The Guardian writer claims the receipt of 9,500 suggestions online and quotes the director of Involve as saying that “badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all”. Something I’ve long suggested along with the practice that if one consults, one must then make some changes in deference to the feedback, and do it pretty quickly and in direct response to the concerns. If one is unable to alter matters, it’s then necessary to say why.
In my experience there are various types of “consultation”. There are ones like this where it just asks for ideas and then apparently the questioning body picks the ones that most align with existing policy and praises them and the proposers. There are the other type where the questions are so tightly directed that the respondent can only directly support the policy being proposed to a greater or lesser extent. These are crowdsourcing in a representative democracy.
To ask open questions, gain open answers and change society one needs a truly deliberative democracy but will turkeys vote for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I don’t think so…
Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, Social media, transformational change | Tagged: Crowdsourcing, The Guardian, The Register | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.
Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.
He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...
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