Tanja Aitamurto Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making

Publication of the Committee for the Future | 1/2012 The Committee for the Future is an established, standing committee in the Parliament of Finland. The Committee consists of 17 Members of the Finnish Parliament. The Committee serves as a Think Tank for futures, science and technology policy in Finland. The counterpart cabinet member is the Prime Minister. The Committee was established in 1993. Crowdsourcing for Democracy:

A New Era in Policy-Making

Tanja Aitamurto

Publication of the Committee for the Future | 1/2012 Tanja Aitamurto Visiting Researcher Liberation Technology Program Stanford University United States [email protected]

Layout: Kirmo Kivelä

ISBN 978-951-53-3459-6 (Paperback) ISBN 978-951-53-3460-2 (PDF)

Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) applies to the right to use this work. More here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Foreword

innish people are now more edu- that use the power and knowledge of crowds cated and capable of following world brought together through the internet. F affairs than ever before. Yet over the Crowdsourcing offers exciting possibili- long run traditional forms of political par- ties for democracy. Citizens can take part in ticipation have declined considerably. Voter brainstorming, discussing, developing, and turnout remains relatively low, most parties even implementing decisions that used to be are losing members and it is more difficult to the domain of political and expert elites. get people to run for office. People’s participation through crowd- It would probably be an exaggeration to sourcing does not replace traditional demo- state democracy is in crisis. Finnish people cratic tools or experts, but complements and are still interested in politics and society. supports them. Participation can yield better However, people’s trust in the political sys- decisions. A thousand pairs of eyes will spot tem and representatives has eroded – and, as potential problems easier and a thousand many fear, it is likely to keep on eroding in heads will come up with more new ideas than the future. just a few. This benefits all. Tanja Aitamurto We need to do something. We must up- has done ground-breaking work in introduc- date democracy for this millennium using ing crowdsourcing to Finland. I hope this re- new technologies. port will inspire state and local authorities as Crowdsourcing is less a new idea than a well as companies and civic groups to experi- new concept. It covers a wide array of tools ment and implement crowdsourcing.

Oras Tynkkynen Vice Chairperson, Lead in the Crowdsourcing Project Committee of the Future, Standing Committee Parliament of Finland

5 | Foreword Contents

Foreword 5 1. Introduction 7 2. What is crowdsourcing? 8 – Definition of crowdsourcing 8 – Crowdsourcing in practice 9 Crowdmapping 9 Innovation processes 11 Creative work and entertainment 13 Journalism 14 Microwork 15 Crowdfunding 15 – Evolution of crowdsourcing 17 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes 18 – Law and strategy processes 18 Constitution reform in Iceland 18 National Dialogues in the United States 20 – Participatory budgeting 23 Budget preparation in Chicago 23 Budget preparation in Calgary 24 – Citizen petition sites 25 Open Ministry in Finland 25 We the People in the United States 27 – Open innovation and innovation challenges 29 4. The role of crowdsourcing in democratic processes 30 – Impact of crowdsourcing on democracy 30 – Amateurs or experts? 32 – Crowdsourcing in Open Government 33 5. Ingredients for successful crowdsourcing 34 6. Challenges of crowdsourcing 37 7. Policy recommendations 40 8. Conclusion 42 Bibliography 43

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 6 1. Introduction

n array of local and national gov- author’s academic orientation, this book has ernments around the world have an academic touch to it, yet it is also meant A applied crowdsourcing as a partici- to serve as a handbook for crowdsourcing in patory method to engage citizens in political policy-making. processes. Citizens are invited to share their The book is structured as follows. In ideas, perspectives and opinions about mat- Chapter 2, we’ll get an overview of crowd- ters that traditionally were beyond their ac- sourcing in several fields, thus giving context cess and influence. to the rise of participatory culture. This chap- This book is an introduction to crowd- ter addresses often posed questions about sourcing in policy-making. By introducing crowdsourcing and related phenomena like case studies from several countries, the book microwork and crowdfunding. Chapter 3 in- demonstrates how crowdsourcing has been troduces an array of cases, in which crowd- used in participatory budgeting in Canada, sourcing has been used in policy-making. federal strategies in the United States, and Chapter 4 analyses the role of crowdsourc- constitution reform in Iceland. By drawing ing in democratic processes, crowdsourcing on these cases, the book analyzes the role of as a part of Open Government practices, and crowdsourcing in democracy. Furthermore, the impact of crowdsourcing on democracy. the book summarizes the best practices for Chapter 5 outlines the factors for success- crowdsourcing and outlines the benefits and ful crowdsourcing. Chapter 6 discusses the challenges of open processes. challenges of crowdsourcing. Chapter 7 gives The book is based on a report for the Com- policy recommendations for enhancing mittee of the Future in the Parliament of Fin- transparency, accountability and citizen par- land, delivered by the author in the Spring of ticipation in the Finnish governance. Chapter 2012. The author, Tanja Aitamurto, is a visit- 8 concludes the book by encouraging actors ing researcher1 at the Liberation Technology in society to experiment with new tools for Program at Stanford University. Due to the openness, transparency and accountability.

1 http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/Tanja_Aitamurto/ Tanja Aitamurto 20th October, 2012 Stanford, California. Visiting Researcher Liberation Technology Program Stanford University [email protected] www.tanjaaitamurto.com

7 | Introduction 2. What is crowdsourcing?

Definition of crowdsourcing

rowdsourcing is an open call versity (c.f. Hong and Page, 2012), which can for anybody to participate in a task be amplified by deploying crowdsourcing. C open online (Brabham, 2008; Howe, Collective intelligence can refer to wisdom, 2008), where ‘the crowd’ refers to an unde- talent, and knowledge alike; ‘collective wis- fined group of people who participate. Out- dom’ can be used instead to emphasize the sourcing, in contrast, means that the task is temporal dimension: that wisdom extended assigned to a specific agent. In crowdsourcing through space and generations, and through applications, the crowd is invited to partici- collective memory (Landemore, 2012). Im- pate in an online task by submitting informa- proved communication technologies have tion, knowledge, or talent. Crowdsourcing enabled more sophisticated use of collective has become a popular tool to engage people in intelligence, and co-creation and crowdsourc- processes ranging from urban planning (Brab- ing have become popular methods to harness ham, 2010) to new product design and solv- collective intelligence. ing complex scientific problems (Aitamurto, Crowdsourcing can be roughly divided Leiponen & Tee, 2011.) Crowdsourced tasks into voluntary (non-pecuniary) and paid (pe- are typically open for anybody to participate cuniary) crowdsourcing.1 Voluntary crowd- in online. ‘Anybody’ is, however, always a sourcing refers to tasks that people participate constrained population: not everybody has in voluntarily, without receiving a payment. access to the Internet, and not everybody Pecuniary crowdsourcing, instead, refers to knows about the possibility to participate. paid tasks. “Microtasks” and “microwork” The term ‘crowdsourcing’ is also used in which are done through virtual market plac- contexts in which the task is open only to a es such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, for in- restricted group like employees in a certain stance, are pecuniary crowdsourcing. Innova- organization. Companies, for instance, use tion challenges, which are crowdsourcing so- crowdsourcing as a part of their design pro- lutions for design tasks or scientific problems, cess within the organization. fall between these two categories. In these Crowdsourcing serves as a tool to gather challenges, it is possible to get a monetary collective intelligence for a variety of pur- reward, but one is not guaranteed, because it poses. Collective intelligence (Levy, 1997) is a competition. (More about crowdsourcing is based on the idea that knowledge is most in innovation challenges later in Chapter 2.) accurate when it consists of inputs from a This book focuses on voluntary crowd- distributed population. Levy describes col- sourcing. Particularly, the focus is on crowd- lective intelligence as ‘‘a form of universally sourcing for democratic processes. An im- distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, portant conceptual notion here for the sake coordinated in real time, and resulting in the of clarity: in this book, we don’t focus on effective mobilization of skills’’ (Levy, 1997, Wikitype collaboration, which can be defined p. 13.) The opposite of collective intelligence as commons-based peer production (Benkler, is reliance on a single agent-for example, one knowledgeable expert. Collective intelligence 1 There is a growing number of typologies for crowdsourcing, and many of those are more detailed than the one presented here. For those, see e.g. typically involves the notion of cognitive di- Aitamurto, Leiponen & Tee, 2011.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 8 2006.) In commons-based peer production, participate in; for instance: share your opin- participants collaborate to achieve a goal, for ion, send a picture, or solve this problem. instance, writing a piece of text. The flow-like Typically, there is a time constraint in the process is open for anybody to participate in. task. However, these concepts are not mu- Wikipedia is an example of commons- tually exclusive. Another perspective on the based peer production. In crowdsourcing, conceptual hierarchy defines crowdsourcing there are clearly defined tasks for people to as a tool for commons-based peer production.

Crowdsourcing in practice

Crowdmapping

his chapter introduces exam- initiative2, or by examining the Milky Way.3 ples about crowdsourcing in several There are clear instructions on these sites T realms. Let’s start from space. NASA on how to participate in crowdsourcing. In (National Aeronautics and Space Adminis- these initiatives the tasks the citizens do are tration) in the United States crowdsources fairly simple and routine. They are tasks that space research by inviting citizens to partici- pate. Anybody can join NASA’s research by 2 NASA’s Citizen Science Lab: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/welcome 3 http://www.milkywayproject.org/, and news about the Milky Way mapping craters on their ‘Be A Martian’ web project: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-062

Picture 1. Citizens participate in space research in NASA’s Be A Martian Citizen Science Laboratory online. They can, for instance, count craters on Mars.

9 | 2. What is crowdsourcing? Picture 2. Crowdmapping the voice of Somalians about the nation’s future on Al-Jazeera news site. http://www. aljazeera.com/indepth/ spotlight/somaliaconflict/ somaliaspeaks

couldn’t be done without mass-participation, platform, has been commonly used in crowd- and would most likely be left undone without mapping. Crowdmaps have been used to map crowdsourcing. The surface of Mars, for ex- consequences of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, ample, has been only partially mapped, and election fraud in Egypt and India (Meier, 2011), the mapping can’t be completed without mas- and most recently in 2012, violence and crime sive participation. in Syria.5 Crowdsourcing has also become com- Crowdmapping has also been applied to mon in the form of crowdmapping, which track less catastrophic problems. With appli- can be used, for gathering eyewitness tes- cations like SeeClickFix and FixMyStreet, resi- timonials. In crowdmapping, the task is to dents can locate a problem in their neighbor- send information about election fraud, for hood on a map. In some cities, the city picks example, and the information is then placed up reports from the application, responds to on a map. The information can typically be the service requests, and also informs users sent to the map initiator by SMS or by filling about progress on the site. For example, the out a form online. The reports are gathered city of Richmond in Virginia, United States, on a map online. Crowdmaps are an efficient asks its residents to report broken streetlights6, way to visually demonstrate the geographical potholes, and similar problems on SeeClickFix spread of a phenomenon, whether that is vio- (see Picture 3.) When the city has fixed the lence, bribing, snow storms, or traffic jams. problem, it is moved on the site to the ‘closed’ Crowdmaps have efficiently been used to category. Thus, the residents can follow main- map the consequences of crises and to locate tenance progress. Cities use crowdsourcing the need for help. Ushahidi4, an open-source to complement traditional methods (phone

4 http://ushahidi.com / 5 https://syriatracker.crowdmap.com / 6 http://seeclickfix.com/richmond/issues/hot

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 10 Picture 3. The residents in Richmond report problems in their neighborhood on a crowdmapping service. calls, mail, email) of submitting maintenance One of the major challenges in crowdsourcing requests, because crowdsourcing provides an is verifying and assuring the quality of crowd- easy way to report issues online. sourced information. Fact checking done by In crowdmapping, “reports” or eyewit- humans requires resources and knowledge. ness testimonials are either published im- New, more automated methods of checking mediately without checking the credibility information are being developed; but even of information or the credibility is checked. those face challenges.

Innovation processes

ompanies use crowdsourcing to encourage people to use preventative care for gather ideas for product develop- health programs, through InnoCentive. The C ment and to sense trends among solvers are rewarded with a monetary prize of users. InnoCentive is one of the best-known anywhere from a few thousands to hundred of platforms for product development crowd- thousands of dollars. sourcing. Companies such as Procter & By crowdsourcing, companies receive Gamble and EliLilly ask the crowd to submit several solutions to their problems. In an solutions to problems, ranging from compli- ideal case, they also save money: instead of cated chemistry problems to finding a way to recruiting new R&D teams for solving one

11 | 2. What is crowdsourcing? Picture 4. Nokia crowdsources ideas for innovations in its IdeasProject community. problem, the solution can be crowdsourced. an expert from the field (Jeppesen ja Lakhani, This is an advantage particularly in cases in 2010.) Crowdsourcing for innovation pro- which finding a solution requires expertise cesses is a reflection of larger transformations beyond the company’s R&D core exper- in division of labor. It is becoming more com- tise. To go through the recruitment process mon that workers apply their knowledge in to achieve a solution to a particular problem several fields, working on several assignments would be senseless. with overlapping tasks, rather than working Some research findings indicate that prob- for only one employer. lem solvers outside the specific knowledge- By using crowdsourcing in innovation area of the problem (e.g. physics, chemistry, processes, companies apply the principles of mechanical engineering) can, through crowd- open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003.) Open sourcing, help devise novel solutions. For innovation refers to the flow of innovation example, in a study about crowdsourcing in and knowledge both inbound to the compa- new product development, the non-experts ny from external collaborators and outbound created solutions which had more novelty from the company. In the inbound flow, the value and customer benefit according to the company receives ideas, which the organiza- evaluation panel than those created by ex- tion can use in its internal innovation pro- perts (professional engineers and designers), cesses. This means moving away from the tra- though somewhat lower in feasibility (Poetz ditional “Not Invented Here” syndrome as- and Schreier, 2011.) In this study, results from sociated with the closed innovation model, a researchers within a company were compared scheme of thinking in which ideas beyond the with ideas from users by evaluators blind to company’s boundaries are ignored. In the out- the source of the ideas (professionals vs. us- bound flow, the company encourages others ers). They evaluated the novelty of the idea to commercialize its technologies. Companies compared to existing solutions, the value of thus no longer restrict themselves to markets the idea in solving customers’ needs and the that they serve directly, but rather use part- feasibility of the idea. Another study indicates ners to find new markets and business models that a problem solver beyond the field of the for their technologies and other intellectual problem is more successful at the task than properties (Enkel et al., 2009.) Open inno-

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 12 vation is implemented for example by Open and executed as applications to the Nokia Ovi Application Programming Interfaces (Open Store. APIs) (Aitamurto & Lewis, 2012). Through Open innovation has deliberately been Open APIs, organizations encourage external applied and studied mainly in companies actors to use their content and open data sets. (Dahlander & Gann, 2010). More recently, Among other companies, Nokia, a mobile in- open innovation has been moving to the pub- ternet company, applies the open innovation lic sector. Organizations are increasingly ar- strategy by using its IdeasProject platform7. ranging open innovation challenges in which On IdeasProject, Nokia crowdsources ideas they crowdsource innovations and business for instance for social innovations in collabo- ideas. One of the best-known ones is the X- ration with organizations like WorldBank and Prize awarded by the X-Prize Foundation 8 United Nations. The best ideas are rewarded in the United States.

7 http://www.ideasproject.com/index.jspa 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation

Creative work and entertainment

he Finns have been pioneers in keting. Organizations crowdsource de - crowdsourcing for creative work. sign work like logos and advertisements. T The movie IronSky9 premiered in For instance, the car brand Chevrolet 12 the Spring of 2012 in Finland, and a part of crowdsourced its SuperBowl advertise - the production process was crowdsourced. ment in 2011. Companies either do crowd- The crowd was invited to participate by writ- sourcing on their own websites, or alter ing and recording the script and producing natively, they use crowdsourcing commu- marketing trailers. IronSky was produced by nities13 for creative works such as Jovoto 14 the Finnish Wreck-a-Movie10 crowdsourc- or 99designs.15 Whether the crowdsourced ing platform. Crowdsourcing has also been task is to produce an ad or to record a piece used in opera production. The opera made in of a movie script, the process contributes to the OperaByYou11 -project premiered at the spreading awareness of the end product. The Savonlinna Opera Festival in Summer 2012 more people are involved with the production in Finland. process, the more people anticipate the result Crowdsourcing is used also in mar - of this joint effort.

12 http://www.chevrolet.com/culture/article/superbowl-route66/ 9 http://www.ironsky.net/ 13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR6VMLUeRXw&feature=relmfu 10 http://www.wreckamovie.com/about 14 http://www.jovoto.com/ 11 http://operabyyou.wreckamovie.com/ 15 https://99designs.com/

13 | 2. What is crowdsourcing? Journalism

rowdsourcing is used in jour- nalism to find story topics, infor- C mation, and sources. One of the first well-known crowdsourcing initiatives in journalism was from Talking Points Memo (TPM), an American political publication, in 2007. TPM asked the readers to weed through thousands of emails to find relevant informa- tion about a case in which the United States Justice Department fired lawyers with alleg- edly unjustified reasons. The British newspaper the Guardian used crowdsourcing in the UK in 2009. Readers Picture 5. British newspaper The Guardian asked were invited to investigate hundreds of thou- its readers to parse MPs’ expense receipts to sands of documents relating to the nation- discover the ones worth investigating further. wide political scandal (Aitamurto, 2011). Tens of thousands of readers helped the Guardian to parse the documents. Crowdsourcing was about problems in senior health care and in executed by using a simple software with development aid. In Finland, Huuhkaja.fi16 which the readers were able to sort out docu- uses crowdsourcing systematically in maga- ments (picture 5). The Guardian has also used zine and feature journalism. A Finnish wom- crowdsourcing in several other instances, for en’s magazine Olivia17, published by pub- instance in tracking the consequences of budg- lishing company Bonnier, uses crowdsourc- et cuts in the UK. ing on a platform designed for collaboration In the Spring of 2009, Huffington Post, between readers and journalists. The leading an online newspaper headquartered in the daily newspaper in Finland, the Helsingin Sa- United States, gave a task to its readers: to nomat, investigated stock shortselling in its compare the original stimulus bill from the award-winning story series in 201118, in which US Senate with the compromise. The readers crowdsourcing was used.19 By crowdsourcing, were instructed to point out “any significant the journalist received a tip from a reader, and differences,” particularly “any examples of this tip lead into revelation of a questionable wasteful spending or corporate giveaways holding company arrangement in Osuus- that aren’t stimulative.” To give a few more pankki, a Finnish co-operative bank. examples about crowdsourcing in journal- ism: the American cable channel CNN crowd- sources eyewitness reports from all over the 16 http://huuhkaja.fi/ 17 www.omaolivia.fi world. A Swedish newspaper Svenska Dag- 18 http://www.hs.fi/talous/OP-Pohjolan+pankkiirit+saaneet+miljoonaosin bladet has crowdsourced mortgage interest koja/a1305552278888 19 http://www.iltasanomat.fi/kotimaa/tutkivan-journalismin-palkinto- rates from 25,000 readers, and information hsn-tuomo-pietilaiselle/art-1288459021538.html

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 14 Microwork

ecuniary crowdsourcing en- States or in India. By using virtual work tails crowdsourcing of work for “an marketplaces such as Mechanical Turk, com- P undefined” crowd of workers. These panies can outsource routine small tasks tasks are distributed in virtual marketplaces, to an enormous crowd of workers. In con- like Amazon Mechanical Turk. On Mechani- trast to traditional outsourcing, in which cal Turk20, anybody can sign up as a worker the performing agent of the task is known, and as an assignment giver. The workers, who in crowdsourcing, the task is open to an are called ‘turkers,’ do typically simple tasks undefined crowd, out of which some will – called microwork or microtasks – such as take up the work. Crowdsourcing work is a checking numbers on a spreadsheet or tag- quickly growing phenomenon, which will ging pictures. The tasks are rewarded with a globally change the division of labor. Finn- payment, which typically is very small. An ish companies are also part of the evolv - hourly pay can be from one to two dollars ing scheme: a company called MicroTask 21 (Ross et al. 2011). specializes in digitizing documents by crowd- Most turkers live either in the United sourcing.

20 https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome 21 http://www.microtask.com/

Crowdfunding

rowdfunding refers to an ac- Typically, in crowdfunding, individual in- tivity in which funds are gathered vestments or donated funds are small. The C online from a large crowd. Crowd- power is based on the volume of participants: funding is used for a variety of purposes, like when enough small amounts are gathered for social good, start-up investments, art pro- together, the end-sum becomes large. On jects, and journalism. One of the best-known Kickstarter, over three million dollars were crowdfunding platforms is Kickstarter22, on gathered to make a movie24, in what was a which people gather funding for projects on record-breaking crowdfunded project. art, literature, and technology. Crowdfund- Crowdfunding has also become more pop- ing dissolves traditional funding models, ular in journalism. Spot.Us, head-quartered whether investments or donations, and pro- in the United States, is one of the best-known vides a new, ideally efficient way to quickly crowdfunding platforms for journalism.25 fund a project. Crowdfunding can be seen as Crowdfunding can also refer to loans – like a manifestation of collective intelligence: by microloans or microlending – in which assets investing or donating money, the crowd in- are gathered from a variety of sources online. dicates the technologies or companies they Microlending has become more common believe in and the kind of societal problems through organizations such as Kiva.org.26 An they think are worth investigating, the kind of investor lends a small amount money to an books they feel are worth writing, and so on.23

24 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure 22 http://www.kickstarter.com/ 25 http://spot.us/ 23 Aitamurto, 2011 26 http://www.kiva.org/

15 | 2. What is crowdsourcing? Picture 6. On Kickstarter, one of the best-known crowdfunding platforms in the world, people raise funding for their projects. This art project has gathered $50,000. entrepreneur in a developing country. That mon also as a funding model for start-ups. In small amount helps the entrepreneur to pro- this model, the start-up gathers funds from ceed with their business. When the business investors through crowdfunding, for example makes a profit, the entrepreneur pays the loan through companies such as CrowdCube and back. The investor can then reinvest the mon- GrowVC, which function as crowdfunding ey in another entrepreneur. intermediaries. The investor can get started Crowdfunding has become more com- with as little as 20 dollars in a month.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 16 Evolution of crowdsourcing

s the previously introduced ex- much more restricted in size and diversity. amples of crowdsourcing demon- Crowdsourcing is a part of broader soci- A strate, crowdsourcing is used wide- etal developments, in which the citizens – and ly in several realms. The interesting cases of consumers – can participate in processes pre- crowdsourcing are endless: KhanAcademy, viously closed. Along with the rise of partici- a source for online education, crowdsources patory culture (Jenkins, 2004; 2006) citizens subtitles for videos. The United States Trade- channel their cognitive surplus (Shirky, 2010) mark and Patent office crowdsources patent into online processes, such as crowdsourcing. reviews.27 Cell researchers crowdsource parts Cognitive surplus refers into our cognitive re- of cell research.28 And so on. source, which is remaining after we accom- Crowdsourcing, however, is not based plish all mandatory tasks. Transformations on a novel mechanism. In the 1800s in Great in culture, leisure time, and the nature of Britain, a solution for determining longi- work life contribute to that surplus. Citizens tude was crowdsourced. The Government increasingly expect the chance to partici- of the country set up the Longitude-prize29 pate, and citizen activism is increasingly be- to encourage problem solving. ing channeled online (Shirky, 2008.) In this The mechanism of crowdsourcing still modern activity, communication is real-time, works the same as it worked in 1800s Britain: dynamic, and multi-way: the flow goes from the task is open for anybody to participate citizens to institutions and back. The commu- in. ‘Anybody’ was, and still is, determined nication flows also from citizens to citizens by knowledge and expertise. Improved com- since the citizens’ input is there for anybody munication technologies distinguish crowd- to see and comment on. The recipient in this sourcing then from now. New technologies scheme is also a sender and producer. The enable more efficient crowdsourcing, and same mechanism also applies to democracy: since the web is accessible to a growing num- the citizen becomes more active and moves ber of people, more people can participate from the spectator’s seat onto the stage. in crowdsourcing. In 1800s, the crowd was

27 http://www.peertopatent.org/ 28 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=victory-for- crowdsourced-biomolecule2 29 http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/info_sheets_john_harrison.htm

17 | 3. Crowdsourcing for democratic processes 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes

his chapter focuses on crowd- It is important to note that this chapter brief- sourcing in policy-making. Crowd- ly introduces several cases in which crowd- T sourcing is used in listening to citi- sourcing has been applied in policy-making, zens’ opinions and gathering information. but does not analyse their success or failure. This book does not cover all instances of such This is due to the lack of criteria of success crowdsourcing, but focuses on cases in which in the phenomenon introduced in this book. the establishment initiates the crowdsourcing The question is: How should we measure process. This book examines crowdsourcing the success? Should we assess the success by as a part of traditional, established democratic the volume of participation, the diversity or processes. The emphasis is on cases in which quality of participation, or by the quality of crowdsourcing is leading to an end-goal, outcome? How can we define ‘quality’ in this whether that is budget, strategy, or law. This context? These vital questions remain unan- chapter does not include cases in which civil swered in the study of crowdsourcing for society independently crowdsources some- policy-making, and are yet to be addressed in thing without a “pipeline” into the traditional the forthcoming work by scholars in this field. decision-making process.

Law and strategy processes

Constitution reform in Iceland

rowdsourcing was used in As preceding events to crowdsourcing, there Iceland in 2010 and 2011 in the con- had been national assemblies2 for citizens to C stitution reform process1. The con- discuss the country’s values and future. In the stitution needed reforming, and the Prime assembly in 2010, Icelanders shared perspec- Minister Johanna Sigurðardóttir, among tives about the constitution. Input from 1,000 others, wanted to invite the citizens to join people was summarized into this mind map the reform process. The citizens’ knowledge, http://thjodfundur2010.is/nidurstodur/ ideas, and expertise were crowdsourced for tre/, which was later used in the constitution the constitutional reform. reform. Based on proceedings in the national Iceland was recovering from a heavy fi- assemblies, crowdsourced constitution pro- nancial crisis, which lead into a recession. cess was set to start. First, the Icelanders chose This crisis also lead to democratic recession, 25 representatives to a constitution reform since the citizens’ trust in the powerholders council. These representatives were regular deteriorated. citizens rather than professional politicians,

1 Video about the constitution reform process in English 2 http://www.thjodfundur2010.is/ http://youtu.be/4uJOjh5QBgA and http://www.thjodfundur2009.is/

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 18 Picture 7. Versions of the human rights article in the Icelandic constitution. By clicking on the links the user can read both the versions and track changes.

and they were chosen in elections. There were of Icelanders supported the draft. 3 As the hundreds of candidates for the council. The referendum is non-binding, Alþingi, the group of 25 representatives started the very Icelandic parliament, will ultimately decide ambititous reform process, which was set whether the draft will be used as a guideline to be completed in only a couple of months. for a new constitution, which would replace Though the Supreme Court of Iceland did not the existing constitution from 1944. accept the result of the reform council elec- Crowdsourcing brought new perspectives tions due to alleged technical problems in the to the constitution, perspectives which might election, the Parliament in Iceland supported not have been noted otherwise. For instance, the election result, and thus the reform board the reform board received a tip to include was able to start its work, despite the contro- the issue of segregation based on genomics, versy. which has become more pressing along with The council was assigned to use guide- the spread of consumer genomics tests. Thus, lines drafted in national assemblies. After the crowdsourcing made the gathering of knowl- meetings the most recent versions of the con- edge in the constitution reform process effi- stitution draft were published online and citi- cient: The search for information is extended zens were invited to comment on the drafts. to the “crowd’s” knowledge neighborhoods Participants left thousands of comments on- (c.f. Afuah and Tucci, 2012), thus extending line. (Picture 7) the search to unknown and unexpected ar- The comments were left on the website; eas of knowledge. Typically, the knowledge additionally, individuals sent emails and tra- search is broadcast only to known and local ditional letters to the reform council. The re- knowledge neighborhoods. form council also heard from experts in tra- The process raised a nationwide discus- ditional offline ways in the process. sion about the meaning of constitution. The reviews of the reformed constitution Thus, the open process holds the potential to draft state that though it allocates more pow- raise citizens’ awareness of democratic pro- er to the citizens than the current one, it is not cesses and policy-making. The open process as radical as anticipated. The reformed consti- also resulted in an alternative to the current tution is currently under review in the Parlia- constitution – an alternative that the citizens ment of Iceland, and it has to be approved by can form opinions about, comment on, and two Parliaments. In the Fall of 2012, a non- discuss. Traditionally, law reform processes binding referendum was organized in Iceland 3 http://gigaom.com/europe/icelanders-approve-their-crowdsourced- about the reformed constitution. Twothirds constitution/

19 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes are closed to the public, and only established online access? How to make citizens’ voice experts are heard. Therefore, the open pro- heard throughout the process, when the tra- cess creates a possibility for citizen empow- ditional policy-making process takes over? erment, which can lead to the strengthening How to keep people motivated to participate? of political legitimacy. Citizens can feel that How to make them demand accountability they are a part of the process, and therefore, from the politicians so that citizens are (at feel ownership over the political processes least) given a reason when their feedback is that shape their lives. not taken into account? The voice of Iceland- The open constitution reform process did ers has sometimes been ignored, when some not work out – of course – without problems. political parties have opposed the reform. This pioneering process was very ambitious: That is not surprising, since the constitution the constitution had to be reformed with a draft does have radical reforms. (More about new method in only couple of months. The the details in the constitution in this study: novelty and tight schedule resulted into chal- https://webspace.utexas.edu/elkinszs/web/ lenges, such as spreading awareness about the CCP%20Iceland%20Report.pdf).5 process. How to inform the citizens about the In sum, the open process in Iceland was process and encourage them to participate? groundbreaking and very ambitious. The ex- How to choose a representative, diverse re- periment also left some crucially important form board?4 lessons for Iceland – and the whole world – There are more challenges: How to create about how we can use novel methods, such as access to the process for those who don’t have crowdsourcing, in listening to citizens.

4 See e.g. Olafsson (2011). 5 http://www.comparativeconstitutions.org/2012/10/we-review-icelan- dic-draft-constitution.html

National Dialogues in the United States

he Federal Government in the office.6 Transparency, collaboration, and par- United States has used crowdsourc- ticipation are the core of that strategy. These T ing for several years now. Crowd- guidelines resulted in an Open Government sourcing as a form of citizen participation Initiative in the United States Government. is a part of the national Open Government- The Open Government Initiative is executed strategy, which President Barack Obama 6 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparency_and_ initiated in the beginning of his first term in Open_Government/

Picture 8. The partici- pants shared ideas and comments about the strategy to improve federal websites in the United States.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 20 Picture 9. The partici- pants collected points and their activity was re- corded to their personal activity streams.

in several contexts of governance, from the national web strategy was in the making, and White House to federal agencies. The pro- perspectives were also requested regarding gress of the initiative can be followed in the the strategy. reports, which are published online. The topic of the dialogue, improvement of The concept of Open Government refers the public service websites, was divided into to applying the principles of transparency and 12 categories. These categories were discussed participation to governance and policy-mak- using a crowdsourcing software called Idea- ing. The national data hub for open data7, na- scale for a couple of weeks. The participants tional crowdsourcing platform8, and We the responded to questions which were posted People -platform9 for citizen petitions are a online. The participants could comment on part of the Open Government Initiative. others’ ideas and vote for or against them. The Furthermore, several federal agencies too participants also tagged their ideas by catego- have applied crowdsourcing in their opera- ries. Thus, the ideas were searchable on the tions. For instance, when General Services website by categories. (Picture 8) Administration was assigned to improve the Conversation catalysts were recruited to public service websites, the agency decided to spur the discussion and share their exper- have a national dialogue on how to improve tise. They were individuals considered to be these websites. Parts of the reform process leaders in the subject matter, such as Craig were opened to the public so that the citizens Newmark, the founder of Craigslist. These could participate in the process online. Citi- conversation catalysts attracted participants, zens and experts were invited to share ideas, and they too responded to questions and perspectives, and opinions about how to im- comments on the crowdsourcing platform. prove the websites. At the same time, the first The participants created a profile, which recorded their activity. (Picture 9) The partici- 7 http://www.data.gov/ pants collected points for their activity, which 8 http://challenge.gov/ 9 https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions could be also followed in the leaderboard for

21 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes Picture 10. The 10 most popular ideas in the crowdsourced federal mobile strategy process in the United States.

the site. The leaderboard informed users of participants about a search function called the most active participants and their activity USA Search, which was already in place. (e.g., ideation, voting, or commenting). Thus, the open process served as a way to in- The organizers also used intense “dialogue form the citizens about government services. moments” to activate the discussion. These A similar national dialogue about federal roughly hour-long segments were called “di- mobile strategy took place in January 2012. alogue-a-thons,” the name modified to follow The strategy is intended to improve public popular hackathons and codeathons. Hack- service and to engage citizens. The idea is athons and codeathons are intensive gather- that when the best tools are identified, gov- ings of coders, designers, and other subject ernmental work becomes more efficient and matter experts, in which prototypes for web resources are saved. Crowdsourcing was used solutions are developed in a day or two. This to gather ideas and perspectives for the mo- model was partially applied in online conver- bile strategy. sations. Just like in the previous example, ideation The process resulted in about 440 ideas, and discussion were open for anybody to 1,700 comments, and over 8,000 votes from participate in. Ideas which were beyond the about 1,000 participants. There were clear scope of the theme for crowdsourcing initia- themes that arose from the discussions. For tive were classified as ‘off topic’ and were not instance, the participants hoped that the displayed on the main page on the crowd- websites were structured following citizens’ sourcing platform. The community hosts needs rather than according the structural spent about half an hour a day responding categorization of governmental departments, to questions and moderating the conversa- so that the users would find the information tions. Awareness about the open process was faster. Participants also hoped that the prin- spread, for instance, in social media and in the ciples of user-centric design would be applied White House blog. Hundreds of ideas, votes, to the website development processes in the and comments were gathered in a couple of public sector. This would ensure clarity and weeks. (Picture 10) smooth user-experience on those websites. In Both the strategies elaborated above are a similar vein, the participants urged the gov- still works in progress, and so the impact of ernment to do more thorough user-testing participation can’t be examined in the ready before the websites are launched. They also strategy. However, based on the experiences hoped that disabilities such as vision disabili- thus far, we can conclude that crowdsourc- ties would be taken into account in the design. ing brings in citizens’ ideas – both from the The participants also wished for better search “inexpert crowd” and the “expert crowd.” functionality in the government websites. Many participants were civil servants or for- When this question was posted on the site, mer government employees, and the partici- the conversation moderators informed the pation wasn’t very large in volume.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 22 Participatory budgeting

Budget preparation in Chicago

rowdsourcing was used in budg- The city of Chicago has been pioneering in et preparation In the city of Chicago its social media use to engage citizens. The C in the United States in 2011. Crowd- mayor has invited the citizens several times to sourcing was pushed forward by the Mayor, pose questions online. The mayor responds to Rahm Emanuel. The city had to make big those questions on live “Facebook Town Hall budget cuts, and the mayor asked the Chicago Meetings,” which are broadcast on the May- residents to speak out on what to prioritize in or’s channel on YouTube.10 Questions can also the budget. be sent to Twitter by using the #AskChicago City officials reviewed the ideas from the hashtag as well as the AskChicago crowd- crowdsourcing process, and the participants sourcing platform, where participants can could follow the progress on the crowdsourc- vote for ideas and comments.11 ing platform. For instance, when an idea Participatory budgeting has become a moved forward to the ‘Review’ category, the trend in the United States. Just like Chicago, idea status changed on the crowdsourcing Cook County in the United States crowd- platform. If idea ended up in the budget, or if sourced a part of the budget preparation in it already was there, the status was changed 2011.12 Cook County had to make big budget into ‘Budget’-category. Thus the participants cuts. A lot of information about budget ex- were able to stay up-to-date about the process. penses, income, and trends from previous The Chicago city employees, who were years was published online. The citizens were hosting the crowdsourcing community, also provided with background information to commented on the ideas. The participants comprehend the budget process, and to evalu- were also informed if a similar proposition ate the reasons and the impact of budgetary was already in the budget or if a similar service existed in Chicago. (picture 11) The awareness 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4473SeuKaA&feature=share&list= UUzVUmQC2R4PEH6ru6N3x5SA of the process was actively spread on Facebook 11 http://askchicago.org/ (picture 12), Twitter, and YouTube. 12 http://blog.cookcountyil.gov/budget/closing-the-gap/

Picture 11. The representatives from the Mayor’s office in the City of Chicago responded to partici- pants’ questions on the crowdsourcing platform and informed them about existing city services. Thus crowdsourcing had an educational function.

23 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes Picture 12. Awareness about the participatory budget process in Chicago was spread on social media, for instance, on Facebook. cuts. Citizens were asked to share their ideas County budget expenses would be published and perspectives about budget and transpar- every quarter. Thus, the citizens can follow ency in governance. The Cook County Board the city’s budget throughout the budget pe- President, Toni Preckwinkle, also announced riod. that for the first time in the history of Cook

Budget preparation in Calgary

he City of Calgary in Canada crowd- Participation was possible on mobile appli- sourced the city’s budget process in cation and social media like Facebook and T 2011.13 The process had several stages Twitter were also used. Off-line events were and entailed both offline and online activities. organized as well. In these events, citizens Citizens were asked to share their opinion received educational material about the city’s about city services and requested to prioritize budget, and the city’s services and budget those. Prioritization happened through bi- were discussed. The participants proposed nary decision-making: The participants were altogether about 1 400 ideas and there were presented two options online and asked to around 120 000 votes. Citizens’ participation choose one which was more important (Pic- resulted in reforming the budget plans so as ture 13.) They could also add their own pro- to be written in clearer language that provided posal on the platform. information in a better way to both citizens and civil servants. 13 http://www.calgarycitynews.com/2011/04/which-city-services-matter- most.html

Picture 13. In Calgary, Canada, the residents were asked to prioritize city services by using a binary decision-making software called AllOur- Ideas.org.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 24 Picture 14. User statistics after the first 100 days in the new e-petition site in Great Britain.

Citizen petition sites

rowdsourcing has become more natures are discussed in the Parliament but common in publishing citizen peti- they do not automatically lead to changes C tions and gathering signatures from in legislation or other actions. Digital peti- them. For instance, in Great Britain citizens tions are also used in local governance. They can sign petitions electronically in a service have, for instance, been used in the Parlia - set up by the Government (Picture 14). ment of Queensland in Australia 14 since Petitions which gather over 100 000 sig- early 2000’s. 14 http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/overview

Open Ministry in Finland

n the Spring of 2012, a change in the Finnish Parliament. Ideas for petitions and Finnish constitution spurred crowd- signatures are crowdsourced online. The sig- I sourcing online. According to the natures can be gathered offline or online by New Citizens’ Initiative Act,15 when a peti- using online bank user identification. tion gathers at least 50,000 signatures in six There are two types of proposals that citi- months, the petition has to be discussed in zens may now initiate. One type is asking the government to take actions towards a goal and 15 http://www.dw.de/new-website-lets-finnish-citizens-propose- laws/a-15795534-1 to change an existing legislation. This propos-

25 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes Picture 15. In the Finnish Open Ministry citizens can start petitions for bill proposals and sign peti- tions using electronic signature.

al type ends up with a ministry responsible Open Ministry enables citizens to cre- for the field. The other type of proposal is a ate an alternative policy-making agenda and new legal bill that is formulated in a crowd- push their initiatives to formal democratic sourced manner (Picture 15). This proposal processes. Politicians and other power hold- type ends up with the Parliament. ers, on the other hand, can see citizens’ hopes Shortly after the Citizens’ Initiative Act and preferences for change. Open Ministry is came into action, a group of voluntary activ- a pioneering model to crowdsource initiatives ists set up an online platform to gather peti- for legislation in collaboration with citizens. tions and signatures. The platform is called Because of the Citizens’ Initiative Act, Open Open Ministry (www.avoinministerio.fi), Ministry also has a ready-made pipeline to es- and this non-profit with its pioneering plat- tablished democratic processes – if a petition form has gained international attention.16 gets enough support, it has to be discussed in established political institutions. 16 http://techpresident.com/news/22927/finland-open-ministry-brings- legislation-crowd, http://gigaom.com/europe/online-crowdsourcing-can- now-help-build-new-laws-in-finland/

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 26 We the People in the United States

he White House in the United 16). The responses are published on the We States has set up a platform for citi- the People website. On some occasions, the T zen petitions. The platform is called White House has also set up conference calls We the People.17 When a petition gathers with people behind the petitions to discuss more than 25,000 signatures in 30 days, the both the issue and the potential follow-up. White House finds an expert in the govern- When a citizen leaves a petition on the site ment to respond to the petition (Picture and has written a short abstract summarizing

17 https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions

Picture 16. On White House’s We the People petition site citizens can start petitions for bills. If a peti- tion receives enough support, the White House gives an official response to the petition.

27 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes the issue, the platform identifies if there are cessed. Thus, the model is different from that any existing petitions related to that issue. If of the Finnish Open Ministry, in which a pro- there are, the We the People platform displays posal which has gathered enough signatures the existing petition for signing purposes to has to be processed by a Ministry or the Par- avoid duplicates in the petitions. liament. However, some actions have resulted We the People was launched in the Fall from citizens’ initiatives at the We the People of 2011.18 This platform is a part of the digi- site, says the White House. As a response to tal transparency and engagement strategy in two petitions regarding the freedom of the in- the Obama government. The site became far ternet and piracy (SOPA and PIPA), Obama’s more popular than what the White House government took a stance in the matter, as anticipated, and therefore, the threshold for well as in a petition to stop unhealthy com- signatures was raised from the initial 5,000 mercial breeding.20 to the current 25,000.19 We the People uses the open-source code We the People serves as a channel between and the goal is to publish the code so that the the citizens and the Obama Government. The crowdsourcing model can be used by any- service doesn’t have a direct pipeline to the body, for instance, the local government and Congress, where the proposals could be pro- foreign countries.

18 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/22/petition-white-house-we- 20 https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/response/were-listening- people seriously 19 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/03/good-problem-have- raising-signature-threshold-white-house-petitions

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 28 Open innovation and innovation challenges

rowdsourcing has become more sions21, from which the jury chose the win- common as a part of the open inno- ners. The participants came from a wide vari- C vation strategy and practices in the ety of groups: web developers, entrepreneurs, public sector (More about open innovation organizations, and schools. The common and crowdsourcing in Chapter 2). Open in- denominator was interest in the environ- novation manifests in the public sector in in- ment. Several federal agencies have organ- novation challenges. The crowd is invited to ized innovation challenges similar to EPA’s participate in these challenges by submitting challenge. NASA (National Aeronautics and their ideas or prototypes for new services. In Space Administration) has done pioneering the United States, several federal agencies work in open innovations. In the recent open have arranged open innovation challenges. government strategy22, NASA emphasizes on The challenges are announced on the United open innovation even more. States’ national open innovation challenge Typically, in innovation challenges in the platform (http://challenge.gov/). The chal- public sector the awards are small amounts of lenges are open for anybody to participate in. money for the best applications. These chal- To cite an example, the Environmental lenges encourage citizens to use open data to Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States develop solutions for improving public ser- organized a challenge for mobile innovations vices. One motivation factor for getting citi- in the field of environment and energy sav- zens to participate is to get publicity for their ing. The challenge was called “Apps for the service. Thus, they can find new markets for Environment,” and the applicants posted their solutions. As a result, they become a part their ideas or the descriptions of their pro- of the open data and open government eco- totypes on the Challenge.gov-platform. The system. Developers and entrepreneurs play goal was to find novel, innovative ways to use a crucial role in this ecosystem because they the open datasets EPA had published online discover ways to use open data and they find and to discover new innovations, which could markets for their solutions. Government can’t make their way to consumers’ hands. be actively developing a huge number of cut- EPA spread the word about the challenges ting-edge web and mobile applications, find in social media, blogs, and events such as users for them, and develop sustainable busi- hackathons. Hackathons are events in which ness models. Therefore, government can’t the participants quickly develop prototypes take on the role of developers and entrepre- based on EPA’s datasets. EPA also organized neurs. As the EPA concludes after reflecting webinars about innovation challenges. The on the lessons learned in their initiative, an- webinars informed about EPA datasets, lis- nouncing the innovation challenge winners is tened to people’s wishes regarding forthcom- not an end of a process but rather a beginning ing datasets, and answered questions about of another process, in which the relationship the challenges. between developers, entrepreneurs, and or- The challenge received about 40 submis- ganizations is growing.

21 http://appsfortheenvironment.challenge.gov/ 22 http://open.nasa.gov/plan/

29 | 3. Crowdsourcing in democratic processes 4. The role of crowdsourcing in democratic processes Impact of crowdsourcing on democracy

his chapter examines the role Simultaneously, policy-makers can sense of crowdsourcing in larger societal citizens’ values and attitudes. With crowd- T trends and the meaning of crowd- sourcing, policy-makers can listen to citizens. sourcing in a democracy. Figure 1 illustrates Thus, crowdsourcing functions as a method the impact of crowdsourcing in democratic for “citizen hearings.” processes. When policy-making processes Opening the political process holds the are opened, information about policy-making potential to increase legitimacy of politics, flows out to the citizens. Therefore, citizens and increasing transparency can strengthen get an opportunity to participate in the pro- the credibility of policy-making. In an ideal cesses, which they previously did not have ac- case, citizens are empowered by participating cess. In Figure 1, the arrow called ‘Outbound in an open process because they are a part of flow’ indicates this process. In inbound flow, the political process even between the elec- the internal political process receives ideas, tions. The arrow labelled ‘Coupled process’ perspectives, and insights from a big crowd. refers to this in Figure 1. When boundaries In Figure 1, the arrow called ‘Inbound flow’ between traditional, closed decision-making, indicates this process. Thus, crowdsourcing and citizen activism become more porous, a functions as a method of gathering infor- new connection between citizens and deci- mation and knowledge from an undefined sion-making is created. Therefore, in Figure 1, crowd, for instance, in the legislative process. the boundary between internal and external

Figure 1. The impact of participatory practices on policy-making

Citizens ”Open method”: Inbound flow crowdsourcing, Ideas, knowledge, co-creation tapping into values Legitimacy of politics Accountability Innovation Network Internal Political Process

Outbound flow Coupled process Citizen empowerment Information about Connection between political processes, powerholders & citizens

channel for participation 2012 Aitamurto,

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 30 process is marked with a sequenced line. transform the status quo. That phenomenon Crowdsourcing as a part of open innova- was evident during the Arab Spring in 2011, tion strategy creates an innovation network where online and offline power was applied around political institutions. The innovation to demonstrate citizens’ power in against an network is in the outer skirts of the circle in oppressive regime. the Figure 1. The innovation network consists Crowdsourcing can function as a method of entrepreneurs, technology experts, and of applying the principles of direct democ- ­citizens, who use open data, develop services racy. In direct democracy, citizens can influ- on it, and thus, make it a part of their busi- ence policy-making “directly,” without the nesses. As a result, these groups provide ser- intermediary of the representative democracy vices to citizens, and they become a part of the (Fishkin, 2011). For instance, a binding nation- ecosystem which is created by Open Govern- al referendum can be perceived as a manifes- ment practices. The benefits of crowdsourcing tation of direct democracy. Also, petitions, are summarized in the Table 1. which are aimed at bill proposals, can be seen as direct democracy. The notion of delibera- tive democracy, instead, emphasizes the im- Table 1. Benefits of Crowdsourcing. portance of rational agreement or consensus, 1. Possibility to gather information from a large crowd faster. which has been reached through deliberation and discussion (c.f. Bessette, 1994; Bohman 2. Discovering new information and per- spectives when the diversity of partici- & Rehg, 1997; Cohen 1989). That consensus pants increases. should lead into the most reasonable solu- 3. Engaging citizens in policy-making. tion. However, it is important to note that in 4. Spreading awareness about the issues crowdsourcing, a representative majority is currently in decision-making process. not automatically formed, if for instance, de- 5. Potential citizen empowerment. liberation is not arranged by using delibera- tive polling (Luskin, Fishkin& Jowell, 2002)1. Second, it is important to note, that delibera- The transparency that crowdsourcing creates tion, as defined in an Aristotlean way refer- can increase trust in political institutions ring to exchange of arguments for or against when there’s democratic recession (Diamond, something, is not always achieved by crowd- 2011) and citizens’ trust in institutions is in sourcing. As evident in the cases presented in decline (Beck, 2006; 2009). During demo- this book, crowdsourcing in policy-making cratic recession, the appeal of traditional is focused on gathering people’s opinions ways for citizen participation, such as vot- and ideas, rather than establishing spaces ing, declines. Citizens channel their activism for deliberation, or designing incentives for through alternative means such as the global the participants to deliberate to achieve con- Occupy movement. When traditional politi- sensus. That is partially due to the nature of cal institutions apply the Open Government crowdsourcing as a method: it functions as a principles, they are building relationships one-time-shot, singular act of participation. with citizens using novel methods. These Co-creation, instead, emphasizes opening up methods can function as bridges to tradition- the process, and thus, holds more promise to al institutions, as the instances presented in create spaces for fully-fledged deliberation. this book demonstrate. Crowdsourcing and (About co-creation as a participatory method, other means for digital citizen influence can c.f. Aitamurto, forthcoming). Crowdsourcing also function as drastic counterforces to tra- and co-creation can be defined as methods for ditional policy-making. In those cases, civil realizing the ideals of participatory democra- society applies “crowdpower” to oppose and cy (c.f. Roussopoulos and Benello, 2005).

1 More about deliberative polling at Center for Deliberative Democracy 31 | 4. The role of crowdsourcing in democratic processes at Stanford http://cdd.stanford.edu/ Amateurs or experts?

rowdsourcing is often seen as the differences and similarities between the opposite of expertise – rather, a amateurs and experts. Citizens, to whom C method to make space for amateurs. we often refer as “amateurs,” are experts in Crowdsourcing brings in a mix of amateurs every-day life and citizenship. They use pub- and experts, whoever happens to be in the lic services daily, and therefore, their experi- crowd. In the instances of crowdsourcing in ences, opinions, and insights are important. the United States government, which were Citizens have had a chance to participate ear- introduced earlier in this book, there have lier too, before the novel digital participatory been both technology experts and “regu- methods, by sending letters to Members of lar” citizens among the participants. Listen- Parliament or discussing with their local rep- ing to both of these groups has been useful. resentative in their municipality. The trans- Because crowdsourcing is an open process, formations in technology and culture have these “undiscovered” experts have a chance reshaped these influence channels, and now, to participate and share their knowledge. more than ever before, people have a chance The threshold to participate is low and the to participate online. communicative transaction cost is small; the Openness also brings new features to expert does not leave their desk and travel to communication between citizens, when Parliament to share their expertise, but can participants in these open processes see each share their knowledge with a couple of mouse other’s opinions in real-time and potentially clicks. This knowledge can turn out to be very on a massive scale. This creates agency in the valuable, as we saw in the constitution reform public sphere – a space in which citizens gov- process in Iceland earlier in this book. ern themselves. This can lead to new forces in Crowdsourcing, however, does not re- society, such as the social movements we saw place traditional expert hearings in legislative in Egypt during the uprisings in the Spring of processes. Crowdsourcing is an informative, 2011. The urge for change among the Egyp- complementary process within traditional tians burst out through social media and was policy-making. The same mechanism is vis- channeled to both online and offline demon- ible in other fields where crowdsourcing is strations. An important element in this move- used. In journalism, for example, crowd- ment was the visibility of peer-communica- sourcing does not replace the work of profes- tion and participation: citizens saw via social sional journalists, but can function as a help- media that their peers also wanted change. ful method within the traditional workflow. This encouraged more people to participate in Furthermore, it is relevant to reconsider the movement (Aitamurto and Sistek, 2011).

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 32 Crowdsourcing in Open Government

rowdsourcing can be used in Transparency combination with Open Govern- Open Data ment principles, by engaging citi- Participation Participatory processes C Open Innovation zens in political processes, one of the core Collaboration principles in open government. As Figure 2 Crowdsourcing demonstrates, the other core principles are Co-creation transparency and collaboration. Crowdsourc- ing can also be linked to open data through open innovation and ways to identify new ways on how to use open data, as presented Citizen earlier in Chapter 3. Empowerment The interest in the principles of open • Impact, activism, government is spreading globally. About 50 tools for social change nations have joined a global network of gov- • Shapes citizenship ernments called the Open Government Part- through agency nership (OGP).2 This partnership network formally launched on September 20, 2011, when the founding governments3 (Brazil, In- Public donesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Sphere Africa, the United K ingdom, and the United States) announced the Open Government Declaration and their national action plans to endorse the Open Government principles.4 The Open Government Partnership or- ganized its first global meeting in April 2012 Figure 2. The role and impact of crowdsourcing in Brazil. The meeting gathered around 1,200 on democracy. representatives from over 70 countries. The meeting discussed trends in Open Govern- ment, those trends being the rise of partici- patory methods in policy-making, increased Open Government Declaration apply the number of open data portals, legislation principles only to a certain extent and certain against corruption, transparency in develop- areas. Obviously, governments make strategic ment aid, and transparency in the use of natu- and deliberate decisions about openness for ral resources, such as minerals.5 instance, which processes are crowdsourced, Governments that are applying Open and what kind of data is being published in Government principles are not 100 percent the open data portals. The role of civil soci- open – not nearly that much! – and never ety is to require more openness and watch will be. The governments committed to the that the Open Government declaration and National Action Plans are being followed. It 2 http://www.opengovpartnership.org/ is becoming more and more difficult for gov- 3 http://www.opengovpartnership.org/open-government-declaration 4 Finland decided to join the Open Government Partnership in May ernments to insist on keeping the processes 2012, and the National Action Plan is being prepared during the Fall of 2012. Apart from offline events, crowdsourcing was also used in the prepa- closed, as openness and transparency are be- ration process. More here: www.suomijoukkoistaa.fi coming easier to apply and citizens’ aware- 5 http://www.opengovpartnership.org/news/revealed-top-ten-commit- ments-open-government-representatives-73-countries-gather-brasilia ness about these possibilities is growing.

33 | 4. The role of crowdsourcing in democratic processes 5. Ingredients for successful crowdsourcing

T his chapter examines the factors for mitment from the initiator of the process, success in crowdsourcing. The chapter will willingness to succeed, and the capacity to demonstrate that success is a sum of several react quickly to twists and turns during the factors. Crowdsourcing requires sincere com- process. i defining the goal and sequencing the process

itizens have to be the starting quences. The crowdsourcing process has to point when designing a crowdsourc- state clearly what the activity on the platform C ing process: they are the main user is that the users are desired to take part in, group. A citizen-centric view in the design what the project is about, and what the conse- process makes the result, the crowdsourcing quences of it are. If the users are asked to share process, user-friendly for citizens. ideas or respond to questions, the questions Also, it is important to keep in mind what have to be clear and the topic has to be nar- the desired outcomes of crowdsourcing are: rowed down. Otherwise the responses will ideas, knowledge, or experiences. The goal run in many directions. That can, of course, of the crowdsourcing process determines the sometimes even be the desired outcome. length of the process and the number of se-

II Communication

rowdsourcing is not an auto- a wide range of societal fields. Crowdsourcing mated process, which always takes is a new culture; therefore, the first crowd- C off quickly when the process is sourcing processes often don’t get a massive launched on the Web. Moreover, awareness volume of participation, especially in a small of the opportunity to participate has to be community. It takes a while before people spread throughout the process. Participants find the project and get over the participation are invited to several platforms from social threshold. Newsletters can be sent to partici- media, blogs, events, mainstream media, and pants to give them updates about progress. networks. Participants can be reached only by That will make them more likely to return to actively contacting groups and individuals in the process.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 34 iii simple technological user-interface

echnological solutions for The users may not have previous experience crowdsourcing have to stem for of crowdsourcing. The technological applica- T user-centricity. The technological tions have to be flexible so that changes can be realization has to be simple to use, particu- made during the process. larly in pioneering crowdsourcing processes. iv managing crowdsourcing process

uccessful crowdsourcing re- instructions are important, because they deter- quires a strong online presence from mine which kind of comments (for instance, S the organizers. The community re- those that are inappropriate and racist) are quires constant attention. The conversation removed from the site. The crowdsourcing has to be curated by responding to questions, platform should have a feature which allows removing inappropriate comments, and cat- categorizing comments beyond the scope of egorizing ideas and comments. This requires the crowdsourcing process to the category of human resources. The community manager of “off-topic,” so that the conversation and idea- the crowdsourcing community monitors the tion do not drift too much, if that is not desired conversation to ensure that the Code of Com- in the process – but sometimes, it is! munication is followed in the process. These

V Duration

rowdsourcing process should of crowdsourcing. typically have a clear timeframe. Crowdsourcing can be done as a short, C That timeframe is communicated intense campaign, which takes just a few to the users on the crowdsourcing platform weeks altogether. The nature of the web as so that they know how long the participa- a dynamic interactive channel supports the tion will remain open. When the users are process. On the other hand, the process to aware of the possibility to participate being gather signatures for petitions can be open open only for a restricted amount of time, online for several months. The crowdmaps on it can attract more participation. If there are which information about problems in street several stages in the crowdsourcing process, maintenance, for instance, is gathered (see the duration of those stages should be com- Chapter 2) are always open. If crowdsourcing municated clearly. It is important to note continues for a long time, reports and sum- that the methods in crowdsourcing have to maries about the results should be published be modified according to the goals and types during the process.

35 | 5. Ingredients for successful crowdsourcing VI Events

ffline events support the also a good opportunity for participants to crowdsourcing process. Events meet the organizers and ask questions and O spread awareness about crowd- give feedback about crowdsourcing. As not- sourcing, and similar tasks that are given on ed in the EPA instance in the United States the online platform can be given to partici- (Chapter 3.) offline events can activate par- pants in the offline event. Offline events are ticipants. vii analysis and monitoring the process

uring crowdsourcing and af- legislative process are crowdsourced, the par- ter crowdsourcing the results have to ticipants are informed about how the process D be analyzed. When the crowdsourc- continues. When the law is ready, it is impor- ing process is over, the results of the process tant to summarize the role of crowdsourcing should be gathered to a report, which is pub- in that process and to elucidate which lessons lished online, so the results are public and par- were learned. When these lessons are pub- ticipants can, with a quick glance, see what the lished online, that information benefits oth- crowd said. When the crowdsourcing process ers. Thus, the whole feedback loop should be is over, the work of spreading information followed through in crowdsourcing, and this about the next steps continues. If parts of the can motivate the participants for the next time.

VIII Commitment to the process

he initiator of crowdsour- the more able one is to find solutions to the cing has to sincerely commit to the challenges the process brings with it. The T process to make it successful. This challenges are examined in more detail in the commitment determines the execution of following chapter. the process: the more sincere the intentions,

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 36 6. Challenges of crowdsourcing

This chapter examines challenges in tive list of the challenges, but rather name the crowdsourcing and how to approach them. most common problems that occur when de- The chapter is not intended to be an exhaus- ploying crowdsourcing in practice. i digital divide

his book focuses on crowdsourc- when the crowdsourcing process is designed. ing online. That premise, of course, If possible, other means of participation can T excludes those who do not have ac- also be used, such as offline events, as elabo- cess to the internet. This digital divide is di- rated in the previous chapter. In general, the minishing in Finland, where almost 80 per- rule of participation in democratic processes cent have broadband internet. However, there applies to crowdsourcing: even though eve- is still a significant portion of those who can’t rybody is invited to town hall meetings, only use the internet and those who don’t want to. some people show up. Participation will nev- This condition has to be taken into account er be 100 percent.

II Crowdsourcing and citizens’ voice

e have to keep clear in our should be more informed than before the de- minds what the role of crowd- liberative process.1 W sourcing in democratic processes Furthermore, crowdsourcing is very vul- is. Crowdsourcing, as defined in this con- nerable to lobbying. That itself is not a novel text, is not representative democracy and is feature, and it is not necessarily a bad thing not equivalent to national referendum. The either. Let’s take an example. If securing the participants’ opinions, most likely, do not resources for health care in local neighbor- represent the majority’s opinion. However, hood is important to the residents, there’s crowdsourcing can be used as a part of rep- nothing wrong with those residents being resentative democracy, for instance, by us- active in a crowdsourcing process where the ing the method of deliberative polling. In matter is discussed. Indeed, isn’t this exactly deliberative polling, a representative sample the kind of citizen activism desired, but of- of citizens is chosen and then that sample ten missing, in modern societies? It is about discusses the topics under deliberation. Af- citizens organizing themselves by using new ter the discussions, the participants express digital methods. The import of crowdsourc- their opinions about the given topic. The ing for citizen activism is that with these open core of this method is that the opinions are participatory methods, citizens beyond tradi- expressed only after the participants have re- tional activist and lobbying groups can now ceived information about the topic, and the have a say. topic has been discussed. Thus, the opinions 1 More about deliberative democracy in Chapter 4.

37 | 6. Challenges of crowdsourcing III The crowd and experts

istening to citizens in crowd- or be limited to informing and complement- sourcing does not replace the hear- ing the process. By using the same logic, as L ing of experts. However, listening to mentioned earlier in this book, crowdsourc- citizens can be taken into account in several ing does not replace the role of politicians in ways. Depending on the topic, the role of citi- democratic processes. zens can range from being equal to experts,

IV Cost

rowdsourcing requires tech- ing citizens about crowdsourcing. Design- nical and human resources. New ing the process and communit y manage - C technical solutions are not necessar- ment requires the most human resources in ily needed for crowdsourcing, since there is a crowdsourcing. When assessing the cost of wide range of existing software. Some of that crowdsourcing, it is important also to assess software is sold on a software as service ba- what the cost would be if new participatory sis, so there is basically no maintenance cost methods were not applied. Knowledge about in those solutions. Free tools like Facebook new methods does not accumulate, and the and Twitter can be very efficient in inform- nation falls behind in lessons learned. v engaging participants

itizens do not automatically partic- which will attract participants just by launch- ipate in crowdsourcing. As crowd- ing the process online. To overcome this chal- C sourcing is a part of a new culture lenge, special attention has to be given to and it is a new method for the majority in so- spreading information about the process and ciety, the threshold to participate can be high. managing the community well. (See more in- Crowdsourcing is not an automated process, structions in the Chapter 6.) vi hate speech and inappropriate comments

rowdsourcing is an open pro- “off-topic.” It is a good practice to publish the cess for anybody to participate in, Code of Communication on the site. The code C and therefore, there is a big variety outlines the undesired modes of communi- of participants. Participation often includes cation. If Facebook-integration is used, using inappropriate comments. Inappropriate Facebook-settings can restrict the visibility of comments have to be removed and other un- inappropriate comments. related comments have to be categorized as

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 38 VII Crowdsourcing for window dressing

rowdsourcing as a participatory meaningless, sign with which the politicians method creates the plausible prom- try to attract popular attention. In this unde- C ise of being heard and having impact. sired case, the project turns into “political This plausible promise can be perceived as a window-dressing,” and the potential contri- challenge in decision-making: how to inte- butions of crowdsourcing remain unused. Po- grate citizens’ opinions and knowledge in the litical window dressing can also decrease peo- final outcome, whether it is a national strat- ple’s motivation to participate in the future, egy or a bill proposal? There is a danger that because the plausible promise of participation crowdsourcing remains only a benign, but – impact, and being heard – isn’t realized.

39 | 6. Challenges of crowdsourcing 7. Policy recommendations

This chapter suggests policy steps and ap- ten in the initial report for the Parliament of proaches to advancing the Open Government Finland, which was published in the Spring principles in policy-making in Finland. The 2012. Updates are indicated in footnotes. following five recommendations were writ-

The potential of crowdsourcing old for participation remains low. The Com- in policy-making should be tested in mittee for the Future needs to closely follow 1 pilot projects run by the Committee other crowdsourcing projects in Finland of the Future in the Finnish Parliament. The and examine possibilities for collaboration lessons learned from these projects need to be with those. For instance, initiatives from the analyzed, and the procedures should be then citizen petition site Open Ministry could be improved for larger-scale follow-up projects. processed in the Parliament, even when those Thus the Committee for the Future serves initiatives don’t reach the required signature as a testing laboratory for the Parliament of limit of 50,000. (More about Open Ministry Finland, and also for the nation at large. These in Chapter 3.) Thus, the Parliament would pilot projects should be related to matters acknowledge and encourage citizen partici- which are close to people’s everyday lives like pation. housing or public services. Thus, the thresh-

Crowdsourcing initiatives should projects could be launched at that event or be launched accompanied with offline similar events to maximize the publicity of 2 events. This can be done in collabora- these initiatives. Furthermore, to enhance tion with civil society organizations and other the ecosystem around Open Government partners. In the Fall 2012, for instance, Fin- initiatives, crowdsourcing projects could be land hosts Open Knowledge Festival, which combined with open innovation challenges, is an international event to discuss open ac- for instance to promote the use of open data cess topics and present related advancements in Finland. from all around the world. Crowdsourcing

The Parliament of Finland needs would also set incentives for governance to to create a strateg y for Open Govern- deploy Open Government principles in prac- 3 ment principles in the Parliament and tice. The success of these processes should be in Finnish governance at large. Thus trans- measured by metrics articulated in the strat- parency and citizen participation would be egy, and thus, the strategy would encourage encouraged throughout the layers of policy- designing and running successful projects. making. The strategy should outline the de- Crowdsourcing should be applied when cre- ployment of Open Government principles ating the Open Government strategy for Fin- in the Parliament and in the Government. It land.

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 40 The Parliament of Finland needs The Parliament should also recognize the to examine the possibilities for updat- challenges in information system manage- 4 ing its information and data system ment that several countries, including Fin- infrastructures. Could the Parliament and land, are facing. Digital development requires the Government transition into using open fast, iterative development processes. How- source code whenever possible? In that case, ever, the skills for digital development and one vendor couldn’t dominate digital devel- management rarely exist in the public sector. opment in public sector. When the source This challenge has been recognized in several code is open, shifting the vendor is easier countries. In the United States an organiza- than with closed, proprietary code. Open tion called for Code For America1 has been source code also contributes to managing the founded to address this challenge. Code for development costs. The White House in the America trains change agents that are sent to United States prefers open source code par- work in local governance and run digital pro- ticularly in their Open Government develop- jects. The goal is to spread knowledge about ment projects. digital development to local governance, as well as the ethos of doing and experimenting.2

1 http://codeforamerica.org/ 2 In the Fall 2012, Code4Europe http://codeforeurope.net/ launched in Europe. It is an initiative similar to Code for America with six cities within the European Union. The capital of Finland, Helsinki, is one of those cities.

The Parliament of Finland should nia already joined the network, but Finland actively advance Finland’s participa- hasn’t.3 Membership in the Open Govern- 5 tion in net works enhancing Open ment Partnership would keep Finland at the Government principles like the Open Gov- core of the latest developments in account- ernment Partnership network. The neighbor- ability, transparency and citizen participation. ing countries of Sweden, Denmark and Esto- 3 Finland decided to join Open Government Partnership in Summer 2012. Finland prepares the National Action Plan for the membership during the Fall 2012. The author of this book is a member in the advisory board for the Government of Finland in the membership process. More informati- on here: www.opengov.fi

41 | 7. Policy Recommendations 8. Conclusion

ith the rise of participatory decisions. They also offer new possibilities to culture and developed commu- take the citizens’ voice into account in tradi- W nication technologies, traditional tional policy-making. institutions can apply transparency and open- We do not yet know where these meth- ness with digital participatory methods. One ods may take us. They are still merely comple- of these is crowdsourcing. These methods mentary to traditional politics. It also remains still appear as new and exotic, yet they can to unknown how they will be integrated into a certain extent become the norm. Based on everyday political decision-making and how the existing case studies about crowdsourcing these methods might be reshaped in the fu- in policy-making, it is evident that citizens ture. We’ll only learn by experimenting with want to influence policy-making, whether it these methods and learning from trials and is about constitution reform or prioritizing errors. For that, we need modern policymak- public services in budget making. They are ers – change makers who understand these willing to use digital means to express their new developments. opinions and share their knowledge about We also have to remember that crowd- matters relevant to them. sourcing or other participatory methods are Crowdsourcing, among other new par- not ends in themselves, but are a means to ticipatory methods, creates new possibilities reach a goal. This goal is a democratic, equal for citizen activism in established political society in which citizens know they are be- processes. They give citizens new means to ing heard and they can create an impact even govern themselves. This can lead into citizen between the elections. empowerment and more informed political

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 42 Bibliography

Afuah, A. N. and Tucci, C.L., “Crowdsourc- Aitamurto, T. and Sistek, H.,“How social ing as a solution to distant search,” Academy media is keeping the Egyptian revolution of Management Review 37 (2012): 3. alive,” (PBS MediaShift, 2011). Accessible at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/09/ Aitamurto, T., “The Impact of Crowdfunding how-social-media-is-keeping-the-egyptian- on Journalism: Case Study of Spot.US” Jour- revolution-alive256.html nalism Practice 5:4(2011): 429-445. Aitamurto, T. and Lewis, S., “Open Inno- Aitamurto, T., Leiponen, A and Tee R. (2011) vation in Digital Journalism: Examining the “The Promise of Idea Crowdsourcing - ben- Impact of Open APIs at Four News Organi- efits, contexts, limitations,” (Whitepaper zations,” New Media & Society (July 2012). for Nokia Ideas Project, 2011). Accessible at: http://www.crowdsourcing.org/document/ Aitamurto, T. (forthcoming) Balancing Be- the-promise-of-idea-crowdsourcing--bene- tween Open and Closed: Co-creation in Mag- fits-contexts-limitations/5218 azine Journalism. Digital Journalism.

Aitamurto, T., Sirkkunen E. and Lehtonen, Beck, U., “Living in the World Risk Society, P., “Trends in Data Journalism: The role of Economy and Society” 35(3) (2006): 329–45. data journalism in newswork,” University of Tampere. Beck, U., World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). Aitamurto, T., Heikka, T., Kilpinen, P. and Posio, M., Uusi Kultakausi: Kuinka sosiaalin- Benkler, Y., The Wealth of Networks: How en media mullistaa kaiken (Barrikadi: WSOY Social Production Transforms Markets and 2011). Freedom (Yale: Yale University Press,2006).

Aitamurto, T. and Könkkölä, S., “Value in Bessette, J., The Mild Voice of Reason: Delib- Co-Created Content Production in Maga- erative Democracy and American National zine Publishing: Case Study of Co-Creation Government (Chicago: University of Chicago in Three Scandinavian Magazine Brands,” Press, 1994). Conference Proceedings at World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Bohman, J. and Rehg, W., Deliberative De- Co-Creation: Bridging Mass Customization & mocracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cam- Open Innovation. bridge ja Lontoo: MIT Press,1997).

43 | Bibliography Bohman, J. (1997). Deliberative Democracy Hong, L and Page, S. (2012). Some Microfoun- and Effective Social Freedom: Capabilities, dations of Collective Wisdom. In Collective Resources and Opportunities. In Deliberative Wisdom. Principles and Mechanisms. Eds. Democracy. Essays on Reason and Politics. Helene Landemore and Jon Elster. pp. 56–71. Eds. James Bohman and William Rehg. 321– Cambridge University Press, New York.. 348. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe, J., Crowdsourcing: why the power Brabham, D. C., “Crowdsourcing as a Model of the crowd is driving the future of business for Problem Solving: an introduction and cas- (New York: Crown Business, 2008). es,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Jenkins, H., “The Cultural Logic of Media 14(1) (2008):75- 90. Convergence,” International Journal of Cul- tural Studies 7(1) (2004): 33-43. Brabham, D.C., “Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects,” Jenkins, H., Convergence Culture: where old Planning Theory 8 (2009): 242-262. and new media collide (New York: University Press, 2006). Brabham, D.C., “Moving the crowd at Threadless,” Information, Communication, Jeppesen, L. B. and K. R. Lakhani, “Margin- and ality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Society 13(8) (2010): 1122-1145. Broadcast Search,” Organization Science 21 (2010): 1016-1033. Brito, J., “Hack, Mash & Peer. Crowdsourc- ing government transparency,” The Colum- Poikola, A., Kola, P., and Hintikka, K.A., bia Science and Technology Law Review Vol Julkinen data – johdatus tietovarantojen 9 (2008): 119-157. avaamiseen (Helsinki: Liikenne- ja viestintä­ ministeriö, 2010). Cohen, J. (1989) “Deliberation and Demo- cratic Legitimacy.” In The Good Polity, edited Landemore, H. (2012). Collective wisdom: by A. Hamlin and P. Pettit, 17–34. New York: Old and new. In Collective Wisdom. Principles Basil Blackwell.. and Mechanisms. Eds. Helene Landemore and Jon Elster. pp. 1–20. Cambridge University Dahlander, L. and Gann, M., “How open Press, New York. is innovation?” Research Policy 39 (2010): 699–709. Levy P., Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. (Cambridge, Diamond, L., The Democratic Recession. Be- MA: Perseus Books, 1997). fore and after the Financial crisis. In New Ide- as on Development after the Financial Crisis Luskin, R.C., Fishkin, J., and Jowell, R., (eds. Nancy Birdsall ja Francs Fukuyama, Bal- “Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling timore: Johns Hopkins University Press,2011). in Britain,” British Journal of Political Science 32(3) (2002):455-487 Fishkin, J., When the People Speak. Delibera- tive Democracy and Public Consultation (Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 44 Meier, P., “Do ‘Liberation Technologies’ Change The Balance of Power Between Re- pressive States and Civil Society?” (Doctoral Thesis for the Fletcher School of Law and Di- plomacy, 2011). Accessible at http://irevolu- tion.files.wordpress.com

Olafsson, J. (2011). An experiment in Iceland: Crowdsourcing a constitution? Conference proceeding paper presented at ‘Epistemic Democracy’ at Yale.

Poetz, M.K. and M. Schreier, “The value of crowdsourcing: Can users really compete with professionals in generating new product ideas?” Journal of Product Innovation Man- agement 29 (2) (2011): 245–256.

Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M.S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B., “Who are the Crowd- workers? Shifting Demographics in Mechani- cal Turk”. CHI (2010). CHI ‘10 Extended Ab- stracts on Human Factors in Computing Sys- tems: 2863-2872.

Shirky, C., Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, (Penguin Press, 2010).

Shirky, C., Here Comes Everybody. The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Pen- guin Press, 2008).

45 | Bibliography Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making | 46 47 | y drawing on several cases around the world, this book illuminates the role of crowdsourcing in policy-making. B From crowdsourced constitution reform in Iceland and participatory budgeting in Canada, to open innovation for services and crowdsourced federal strategy process in the United States, the book analyzes the impact of crowdsourcing on citizen agency in the public sphere. It also serves as a handbook with practical advice for successful crowdsourcing in a variety of public domains.

The author, Tanja Aitamurto, is a visiting researcher at the Lib- eration Technology Program at Stanford University. She examines how collective intelligence, whether harvested by crowdsourcing, co-creation or open innovation, impacts processes in journalism, public policy-making and design. This book is based on a report she delivered to the Parliament of Finland about crowdsourcing for democratic processes.

ISBN 978-951-53-3459-6 (Paperback) ISBN 978-951-53-3460-2 (PDF)