Active and Passive Crowdsourcing in Government

The authors of the article “Active and Passive Crowdsourcing in Government” discuss the application of the idea of crowdsourcing by public agencies. It leverages Web-based platforms to gather information from a large number of individuals for solving intricate problems (Loukis and Charalabidis 284). The scholars revealed that the concept of crowdsourcing was first adopted by organizations in the private sector, especially creative and design firms. Later on, state agencies began to determine how to leverage crowdsourcing to obtain “collective wisdom” from citizens aimed at informing the formulation and implementation of public policies.

Active and passive approaches to crowdsourcing are similar as they are both directed at creating innovative solutions based on the knowledge, thoughts, and insights of members of the public. They are highly automated and contain application programming interfaces (API) (Loukis and Charalabidis 264). In addition, the two models involve the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, online forums, and news sharing sites for data collection. However, they differ in their ICT infrastructure. Active crowdsourcing platform has a task management function for adding multimedia and starting campaigns. It also contains a contribution management component for processing content from citizens. Conversely, passive crowdsourcing platform does not have functions for analyzing information from users.

The researchers assert that the crowdsourcing methods they recommend for state agencies should be aligned with the special needs of users (Loukis and Charalabidis 261). They conducted extensive research to indicate that public institutions should improve the application of process models in gathering information from citizens. Notably, the government is still experimenting on the use of the crowdsourcing methods that are discussed in the article. Consequently, it is necessary to ask the following question: In what ways can the government realize the real-life application of crowdsourcing models?

Work Cited

Loukis, Euripidis, and Charalabidis, Yannis. “Active and Passive Crowdsourcing in Government”.Policy Practice and Digital Science, edited by Janssen, Marijn, Wimmer, Maria A., and Deljoo, Ameneh. Springer, 2015, pp. 261-287.