Crowdsourcing Public Policy

Listening to StationXtv this morning they mentioned www.MyIdea4CA.com. It is an attempt to harness Twitter and hashtags to Crowdsource Public Policy.

It’s been three years since Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in his Wired article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” The term, which describes an online, distributed problem solving and production model, is most famously represented in the business operations of companies like Threadless and InnoCentive and in contests like the Goldcorp Challenge and the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest.
(via CFCM.)

Governor Schwarzenegger launched the www.MyIdea4CA.com website for Twitter users to share and discuss their ideas to move California forward. The MyIdea4CA Twitter Forum was initiated to extend a popular conversation that began in June of 2009 on Twitter when Governor Schwarzenegger called for public participation for new ideas on the state budget.

As government cuts back their budgets, consultants, polling data, and combined with the need for transparency we will begin to see more crowdsourcing projects more and more. It not only creates a way to get real time results of public opinion, but also provides engagement strategies to connect with the public. The real question is the quality of this feedback?

This is not scientific nor a professional response, however it is true public response and engagement. The Public and the European Union has begun working with the public to perfect this approach.

Echoing the Open Government initiatives currently underway at the White House, the process is beginning with an open brainstorming session to identify and evaluate a range of ways in which EU governments can harness the emerging power of the web to transform European public services.

Debate graph on these ideas here: http://debategraph.org/flash/fv.aspx?r=20101

The potential is huge. The trend of such approaches have already caught on. With such traction, do you feel that decisions will now be interpreted as the popular sentiment? Does access and knowledge of social media provide greater access to policy makers?