The paper on the role of governments in crowdsourcing, which I presented at the last ICEGOV 2014 gathering in Guimaraes, Portugal, is now available here. The paper was supposed to be published by ACM Press in the ICEGOV proceedings. However, the proceedings are still unavailable on the ICEGOV or ACM sites. In any event, we have chosen a publishing license allowing authors to publish the paper on their websites. Note that copyright still applies to this material (please read the license before downloading the paper!).
The paper makes a case for the government to harness crowdsourcing as one potential way to improve service delivery and foster people’s participation in selected public policymaking processes. First, it presents a governance-centered analytical framework and then considers three cases to assess the relevance of crowdsourcing for local governments. Finally, the paper concludes by presenting positive recommendations and ideas for further research in this area, bearing in mind that the ultimate goal of government interventions is to enhance human development within specific contexts, not to innovate per se.
One issue the paper does not openly address is the role of governments in broader innovation processes, particularly in fostering social innovation in developing countries. While this can undoubtedly be the subject of another paper or another book, here are a few ideas.
The first one is a challenge. The mainstream view here is that governments cannot and should not innovate for various reasons, as this is essentially the purview of the private sector. In this perspective, the best government can create an adequate policy and regulatory environment to foster innovation. Be that as it may, Mariana Mazzucato’s recent book, The Entrepreneurial State, sheds new light on this and makes a case for governments supporting innovation—note that the book is focused on industrialized countries.
From the perspective of the public sector, innovation has a very different character from that of the private sector. Part of the reason for this stems from the public sector’s mandate to provide public goods, in a broader sense, to the people, such as health, education, national security and justice, to name a few. In other words, it has to create public value that can also be achieved in conjunction with non-state actors, as in crowdsourcing, for example. The same goes for the implementation of policies and programmes aiming at enhancing the supply of public goods. Finally, note that the gap in the provision of public goods in poor developing countries remains huge, making this a crucial issue for them.
Government innovation can also play a role when private goods such as food, banking, etc., falter and fail to reach most of the population. Such “market failures” can provide fertile ground for government innovation and seek new ways, again in partnership with non-state actors, to increase the supply of private goods and ensure that private actors fully furnish them in the medium term. Note that the provision of private goods tends to be financially more sustainable than public goods, as clients of the former pay for such goods, usually at regular market prices, sometimes with state subsidies.
Governments can also promote innovation beyond just setting the regulatory environment at the policy level. This point is perhaps best illustrated by the development of the Internet and associated technologies in the US, where government and public financing played a critical role. One essential aspect of the success of such a public enterprise was the clear distinction between policy prioritization and policy implementation. The government played a vital role in the former but, at the same time, ensured that experts and critical academic institutions led the design and implementation of the network of networks.
This sounds a bit like “industrial policies,” which pick key “infant” industries and provide support to private-sector companies to develop them in a given country (South Korea is a good example here). In this light, innovation policies that foster crucial and strategic areas can provide formidable support to developing countries seeking new ways to become integral parts of the global economy. They can also foster national innovation capacities, enabling them to become innovation producers rather than just consumers and effectively tackle significant human development gaps.
Cheers, Raúl
