Improving Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science as a Policy Mechanism for NASA Brittany Balcom cooperate.across all levels of Government and with non- profit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private Space Policy Institute, Washington, District of Columbia. sector’’). These three traits make up the Open Government Principles. It directed the White House chief technology of- ABSTRACT ficer to work with the director of the Office of Management This article examines citizen science projects, defined as ‘‘a form and Budget and the Administrator of the General Services of open collaboration where members of the public participate in Administration to develop recommendations for an Open the scientific process, including identifying research questions, Government Directive, laying out specific actions to be taken 1 collecting and analyzing the data, interpreting the results, and to forward these three principles. problem solving,’’ as an effective and innovative tool for National This article will focus on the participatory and collaborative Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) science in line principles, specifically with regard to how the continued use with the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive. and development of innovative crowdsourced research and Citizen science projects allow volunteers with no technical citizen science can benefit the National Aeronautics and training to participate in analysis of large sets of data that would Space Administration (NASA) and other space-related groups. otherwise constitute prohibitively tedious and lengthy work for Citizen science does not yet have a single widely accepted research scientists. Zooniverse.com hosts a multitude of popular definition. A product of the Internet, it is relatively new to space-focused citizen science projects, many of which have been science, is still evolving, and exists in a multitude of forms. extraordinarily successful and have enabled new research pub- This discussion will use the terms ‘‘crowdsourcing’’ and ‘‘cit- lications and major discoveries. This article takes a multifaceted izen science’’ as defined by the Federal Community of Practice look at such projects by examining the benefits of citizen sci- for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FCPCCS): ence, effective game design, and current desktop computer and . Crowdsourcing: ‘‘a process where individuals or organi- mobile device usage trends. It offers suggestions of potential zations submit an open call for voluntary contributions research topics to be studied with emerging technologies, policy from a large group of unknown individuals (‘the crowd’) considerations, and opportunities for outreach. This analysis in- or, in some cases, a bounded group of trusted individuals cludes an overview of other crowdsourced research methods or experts’’ such as distributed computing and contests. New research and . Citizen science: ‘‘a form of open collaboration where data analysis of mobile phone usage, scientific curiosity, and members of the public participate in the scientific pro- political engagement among Zooniverse.com project participants cess, including identifying research questions, collecting has been conducted for this study. and analyzing the data, interpreting the results, and problem solving.’’2 INTRODUCTION: CITIZEN SCIENCE AND THE U.S. GOVERNMENT Although the FCPCCS does not include prizes and chal- n the first day of his position in office, President lenges in its definition of crowdsourcing, some discussion of Barack Obama gave the Memorandum on Trans- these methods will also be included in this article. The primary parency and Open Government his inaugural sig- focus of this research is citizen science projects conducted O nature. The memorandum states that the American over the Internet, often in a ‘‘gamified’’ format. government should be transparent (‘‘put information about The first resulting document from the Memorandum’s call their operations and decisions online and readily avail- to action was the Open Government Directive issued in De- able to the public’’), participatory (‘‘offer Americans in- cember 2009, which established deadlines for executive creased opportunities to participate in policymaking’’), and agencies and departments to take specific action toward the collaborative (‘‘use innovative tools, methods, and systems to development of individual Open Government Plans (OGPs). 98 NEW SPACE 2015 DOI: 10.1089/space.2015.0017 CROWDSOURCING AND CITIZEN SCIENCE The directive laid out a list of requirements detailing relevance National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and to the three Open Government Principles in addition to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).5 The federal government mandating the creation of publicly accessible websites per- has taken advantage of citizen science and crowdsourcing to taining to these goals. It states that ‘‘the Federal Government contribute to agencies’ missions with success in a number of should promote opportunities for the public to participate areas. The EPA has introduced ‘‘volunteer monitoring’’ in throughout the decision-making process,’’ suggesting agen- procuring data about water quality, which it uses for ‘‘delin- cies describe ‘‘new feedback mechanisms, including innova- eating and characterizing watersheds, screening for water tive tools and practices that create new and easier methods for quality problems, and measuring baseline conditions and public engagement.’’ Additionally, each agency is required trends.’’ In addition to data collection, the EPA notes that to ‘‘revise its current practice to further cooperation with. volunteers also gain knowledge in pollution prevention, help the public and non-profit and private entities in fulfilling clean problem areas, and provide information on areas that the agency’s core mission activities,’’ to ‘‘include proposals to would otherwise be overlooked.6 use technology platforms to improve collaboration’’ and ‘‘in- The NARA Citizen Archivist Dashboard provides volunteers clude innovative methods, such as prizes and competitions.’’ access to projects that include tagging images and documents, The OGPs are to be updated every two years.3 NASA released historical film captioning, and transcription of federal records. version 3.0 in June 2014.4 These activities have produced notable results; over 170,000 Building upon the Memorandum on Transparency and volunteers indexed 132 million names from the 1940 Census Open Government and the Open Government Directive in in 5 months. One of its most successful programs is Old addition to collaboration with groups both inside and outside Weather, a ship log transcription program hosted by Zooni- the federal government, White House policymakers developed verse.org, an online platform hosting a variety of citizen a National Action Plan (NAP) to illustrate progress made on science projects across multiple disciplines, and operated in various Open Government efforts and lay out goals for ad- partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad- vancing these initiatives. The first U.S. Open Government ministration (NOAA). Old Weather will be addressed in greater National Action Plan, released in September 2011, included detail later in this article. 26 different areas of commitment for federal agencies. One of The USGS uses volunteers from its National Map Corps the included goal categories, ‘‘Open Government to Improve program to collect and improve structure data for the Na- Public Services,’’ touched upon helping scientists by pro- tional Map using a web-based mapping tool. The National moting the publication of guidelines on curating unclassified Map Corps began in 1994 as the Earth Science Corps, which scientific data supported by funding from federal science used volunteers to identify and annotate article maps. In agencies. The NAP also asked that agencies ‘‘Promote In- 2001, the Earth Science Corps was renamed and refocused novation Through International Collaboration,’’ launching toward collecting data on built structures in the United States the International Space Apps Competition as a collaboration using handheld GPS units. From 2003 to 2006, almost 23,000 between NASA and other space agencies worldwide to enable data points were contributed by over 1,000 volunteers. The scientists and interested citizens to solve challenges through program then evolved to a web-based format in 2006, with publicly available data. the GPS input system being suspended in 2008 due to Building upon its predecessor, the Second Open Govern- funding issues.7 ment National Action Plan for the United States of America USGS’s ‘‘Did You Feel It?’’ earthquake response system was released in December 2013. It reported that 24 of the enables people worldwide to document their experiences initial 26 commitments had been completed and thus laun- during and immediately after earthquakes. Questionnaire re- ched new initiatives in addition to expanding and developing sponses contribute to the creation of Community Internet further the existing commitments. The 2013 NAP advocated Intensity Maps (CIIM), which are generated nearly instantly, for the creation of an ‘‘open innovation toolkit’’ for federal compared to the months it would otherwise take to prepare agencies ‘‘that will include best practices, training, policies, and distribute a shaking-intensity map. The CIIMs provide and guidance on authorities related to open innovation, in- descriptions of earthquake shaking due to what contributors cluding approaches such as incentive