Effective Governance Through Crowdsourcing: A Strategic Framework for Empowered Participation

Abstract

Crowdsourcing in governance has gained widespread popularity and has become a powerful tool to leverage the collective intelligence of citizens for the nation's social welfare. Despite the growing importance of transforming government–citizen relationships, the design aspect is highly unstructured and fragmented. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the notion is essential, given its expanding importance in practice. This article aims to identify and describe elements and design principles phase-wise to improve the government's potential to derive value from crowdsourcing initiatives for civic participation and collaborative governance. Synthesizing all elements and principles in a strategic crowdsourcing framework is a novel conceptual configuration that contributes to the overall understanding of designing crowdsourcing initiatives in the government sector. The article adopts a systematic literature review and a morphological analysis technique to identify and synthesize all the elements and principles of designing crowdsourcing initiatives. Three crowdsourcing initiatives of the government sector were investigated to evaluate the framework in a practical setting and comprehend its efficacy. Government agencies can ensure enhanced interactivity and bidirectionality by emphasizing the nuances of elements and design principles for executing crowdsourcing initiatives that create epistemic and economic value.