crowd sourcing and democracy

8/2/2019 Crowd Sourcing and Democracy

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Crowdsourcing and DemocracyCrowdsourcing is becoming an important way for government to gather

information and get work done.

ByAaron Davis,Computerworld

Crowdsourcingis becoming an important way for government

to gather information and get work done - giving new meaning

to the phrase "by the people, for the people." While

crowdsourcing is still a relatively new concept, there are

already a number of government projects leveraging the crowd.

Crowdsourced digital maps played a significant role inhelping with relief effortsin the

aftermath of the Japan Tsunami, and the New York Timeshas written aboutthe use of

crowdsourcing in crisis situations like Haiti andLibya. On the home front, cities andgovernment organizations, including the city of Seattle, NASA, the Department of Education

and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, havesuccessfully solicitedfeedback and

incorporated ideas from the public to enhance their citizen-facing web sites andgenerate

ideas and apps that impact government initiatives.

We are seeing government agencies increasingly using online crowdsourcing as an efficient

way to get feedback directly from citizens in order to improve their services or to collect,

manage and organize important data.

Resolving the hesitationWith the growing use ofcrowdsourcingin the public sector, it is essential that agencies are

confident in the quality and relevance of the crowd they are sourcing - especially for the

more sensitive, targeted tasks. Crowdsourcing providers often offer some type of

combination of worker assessment, peer and expert review and worker qualification -

including enabling public ratings of "trustworthiness" for participants.

The government is unique in that, depending on the agency, it vetscrowdsourced

candidateson several different levels. Anyone working directly with confidential information

in an agency needs to have appropriate credentials to participate. But in other kinds of

projects, one need only affirm eligibility to work in the U.S., and assure knowledge about the

topic at hand. While some aspects of crowdsourcing security are still being developed,

today's technology and crowd providers can make it possible to distinguish within the crowd

accordingly.
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Simplifying QA

In terms of vetting a crowd, the social media connections of workers can be a useful

resource. If they are connected to the professional associations and people who signify they

can turn around a high-quality result, they may be of particular value.

The cloud also makes the process of quality-assuring the participants in a crowdsourced

project easier. In placing a project on the cloud, disparate crowds can collaborate, and

agencies can monitor in real-time how workers are progressing with an ongoing crowd task.

This allows the unearthing of answers to such questions as: Are crowd participants regularly

submitting quality work? Are there outliers who aren't submitting anything reasonably close

to the target project? By putting crowd on the cloud, computing resources can also expand

and contract elastically to mimic the patterns of crowd-based work.

As I mentioned in my last post, we work directly with government agencies ontranslating

large amounts of information and documents. For many projects, this involves

crowdsourcing. We are able to leverage translators with varying levels of ability, from the

most knowledgeable topic experts who also speak some of the language, to expert or native

speakers who may know less about the technical topic at hand. With the participants

centralized on the cloud, agencies can collaborate to ensure the overall work follows the

style guide, is consistent and makes sense within its context. This is a real-time mentorship

arrangement where more advanced members of the crowd coach the less consistent

members, ensuring a good result at completion of the project.

For the people, by the people

Crowdsourcing holds significant potentialfor the democratic process as a whole. It does

more than just provide additional sources of useful data and input for governments.

Consider Singapore's recenteGov2015 initiative, which provides a new model of

government based on collaboration with its citizens. As part of this initiative, Singapore

government agencies will interact with citizens through crowdsourcing and social media

initiatives to co-create policies and services. The government of Iceland crowdsourceda

rewrite of its constitution after the 2008 economic collapse. This enabled large scale input of

ideas to establish policies and initiatives that would prevent a repeat of the financial crisis.

Closer to home, California Congressman Darrell Issais leveraging the crowdto draft a

viable alternative to this year's controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation.

Both abroad and at home, crowdsourcing can play into a virtuous feedback loop. As citizens

increasingly engage and contribute their feedback via social media and other web

technologies, our government gains knowledge around the issues that matter most to the
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public. Agencies understand this and incorporate feedback directly from the public,

adjusting policies when public sentiment changes. In many ways, crowdsourcing is

providing an evolution to democracy for the electronic age.

Aaron Davis is Chief Technology Officer of Lingotekand a leader in collaborative translation

platforms. Aaron is at the forefront of the technology and theories enabling organizations to

communicate and interact with a global audience.

crowd sourcing and democracy

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