Next steps in e-government crowdsourcing

In the US, the Federal Administration's Open Government Initiative has spurred use of crowdsourcing tools for several types of citizen participation. Likewise, US states and municipalities have implemented several forums. A survey of crowdsourcing initiatives as well as a discussion of important characteristics and features are provided in this paper. Most critical to crowdsourcing success is the feeling by participants that their efforts were considered and that results came from the initiative. This requires moderators who are knowledge workers adept at working in a social network environment, flexible crowdsourcing tools that make linking and feedback easy to provide, as well as a change in processes used to develop governmental services.