“Crowdsourcing” as a tool for e-participation: two experiences regarding CO2 emissions at municipal level

Public administrations need to find innovative approaches to solving changing problems and to fulfilling their duties. Crowdsourcing in local governments could be defined as the use of new technologies in order to take advantage of citizen knowledge to find solutions to municipal problems. This paper analyzes two experiences of crowdsourcing at local level, and the opinions of the citizens and managers involved, to provide an initial assessment of its effectiveness and suggest avenues for improvement. Engaging citizens in e-participation initiatives is a challenge but, for public sector crowdsourcing initiatives, intrinsic motivation and intangible rewards seem to be enough to motivate participants. Results show that managers find citizens’ propositions viable, but publishing the final results and indicating how the ideas selected will be further developed are pending tasks. Caution is needed as failure to deliver the benefits deemed essential by citizens can make them even more reluctant to engage.

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