Paper by Rajan Vaish et al: “Research experiences today are limited to a privileged few at select universities. Providing open access to research experiences would enable global upward mobility and increased diversity in the scientific workforce. How can we coordinate a crowd of diverse volunteers on open-ended research? How could a PI have enough visibility into each person’s contributions to recommend them for further study? We present Crowd Research, a crowdsourcing technique that coordinates open-ended research through an iterative cycle of open contribution, synchronous collaboration, and peer assessment. To aid upward mobility and recognize contributions in publications, we introduce a decentralized credit system: participants allocate credits to each other, which a graph centrality algorithm translates into a collectively-created author order. Over 1,500 people from 62 countries have participated, 74% from institutions with low access to research. Over two years and three projects, this crowd has produced articles at top-tier Computer Science venues, and participants have gone on to leading graduate programs….(More)”.
Innovation@DFID: Crowdsourcing New Ideas at the UK’s Department for International Development
Paper by Anke Schwittay and Paul Braund: “Over the last decade, traditional development institutions have joined market-based actors in embracing inclusive innovation to ensure the sector’s relevance and impacts. In 2014, the UK’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) Innovation Hub launched Amplify as its own flagship initiative. The programme, which is managed by IDEO, a Silicon Valley-based design consultancy, aims to crowdsource new ideas to various development challenges from a broad and diverse group of actors, including poor people themselves. By examining the direction, diversity and distribution of Amplify’s work, we argue that while development innovation can generate more inclusive practices, its transformative potential is constrained by broader developmental logics and policy regimes….(More)”
America is not a true democracy. But it could be with the help of technology
Nicole Softness at Quartz: “Many Americans aren’t aware they don’t live in a direct democracy. But with a little digital assistance, they could be….Once completely cut off from the global community, Estonia is now considered a world leader for its efforts to integrate technology with government administration. While standing in line for coffee, you could file your tax return, confirm sensitive personal medical information, and register a new company in just a few swipes, all on Estonia’s free wifi.
What makes this possible without the risk of fraud? Digital trust. Using a technology called blockchain, which verifies online communications and transactions at every step (and essentially eliminates the possibility of online fraud), Estonian leadership has moved the majority of citizenship processes online. Startups have now created new channels for democratic participation, like Rahvaalgatus, an online crowdsourcing platform that allows users to discuss and digitally vote on policy proposals submitted to the Estonian parliament.
Brazil has also utilized this trust quite valiantly. The country’s constitution, passed in 1988, legislated that signatures from 1% of a population could force the Brazilian leadership to recognize any signed document as an official draft bill and vote. Until recently, the notion of getting sufficient signatures on paper would have been laughable: that’s just over 2 million physical signatures. However, votes can now be cast online, which makes gathering digital signatures all the more easy. As a result, Brazilians now have more control over the legislature being brought before parliament.
Blockchain technology creates an immutable record of signatures tied to the identities of voters. Again, blockchain technology is key here, as it creates an immutable record of signatures tied to the identities of voters. The government knows which voters are legitimate citizens, and citizens can be sure their votes remain accurate. When Brazilians are able to participate in this manner, their democracy shifts towards the sort of “direct” democracy that, until now, seemed logistically impossible in modern society.
Australian citizens have engaged in a slightly different experiment, dubbed “Government 2.0.” In March 2016, technology experts convened a new political party called Flux, which they describe as “democracy for the information age.” The party platform argues that bureaucracy stymies key government functions, which cannot process the requisite information required to govern.
If elected to government, members of Flux would vote on bills scheduled to appear before parliament based on the digital ballots of the supporters who voted them in. Voters could choose to participate in casting their vote for that bill themselves, or transfer their votes to trusted experts. Flux representatives in parliament would then cast their votes 100% based on the results of these member participants. (They are yet to win any seats in government, however.)
These solutions show us that bureaucratic boundaries no longer have to limit our access to a true democracy. The technology is here to make direct democracy the reality that the Greeks once imagined.
More so, increasing democratic participation will have positive ripple effects beyond participation in a direct democracy: Informed voting is the gateway to more active civic engagement and a more informed electorate, all of which raises the level of debate in a political environment desperately in need of participation….(More)”
The accuracy of farmer-generated data in an agricultural citizen science methodology
Over the last decades, participatory approaches involving on-farm experimentation have become more prevalent in agricultural research. Nevertheless, these approaches remain difficult to scale because they usually require close attention from well-trained professionals. Novel large-N participatory trials, building on recent advances in citizen science and crowdsourcing methodologies, involve large numbers of participants and little researcher supervision. Reduced supervision may affect data quality, but the “Wisdom of Crowds” principle implies that many independent observations from a diverse group of people often lead to highly accurate results when taken together. In this study, we test whether farmer-generated data in agricultural citizen science are good enough to generate valid statements about the research topic. We experimentally assess the accuracy of farmer observations in trials of crowdsourced crop variety selection that use triadic comparisons of technologies (tricot). At five sites in Honduras, 35 farmers (women and men) participated in tricot experiments. They ranked three varieties of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) for Plant vigor, Plant architecture, Pest resistance, and Disease resistance. Furthermore, with a simulation approach using the empirical data, we did an order-of-magnitude estimation of the sample size of participants needed to produce relevant results. Reliability of farmers’ experimental observations was generally low (Kendall’s W 0.174 to 0.676). But aggregated observations contained information and had sufficient validity (Kendall’s tau coefficient 0.33 to 0.76) to identify the correct ranking orders of varieties by fitting Mallows-Bradley-Terry models to the data. Our sample size simulation shows that low reliability can be compensated by engaging higher numbers of observers to generate statistically meaningful results, demonstrating the usefulness of the Wisdom of Crowds principle in agricultural research. In this first study on data quality from a farmer citizen science methodology, we show that realistic numbers of less than 200 participants can produce meaningful results for agricultural research by tricot-style trials….(More)”.
Crowdsourcing Expertise to Increase Congressional Capacity
Austin Seaborn at Beeck Center: “Members of Congress have close connections with their districts, and information arising from local organizations, such as professional groups, academia, industry as well as constituents with relevant expertise (like retirees, veterans or students) is highly valuable to them. Today, congressional staff capacity is at a historic low, while at the same time, constituents in districts are often well equipped to address the underlying policy questions that Congress seeks to solve….
In meetings we have had with House and Senate staffers, they repeatedly express both the difficulty managing their substantial area-specific work loads and their interest in finding ways to substantively engage constituents to find good nuggets of information to help them in their roles as policymakers. At the same time, constituents are demanding more transparency and dialogue from their elected representatives. In many cases, our project brings these two together. It allows Members to tap the expertise in their districts while at the same time creating an avenue for constituents to contribute their knowledge and area expertise to the legislative process. It’s a win for constituents and a win for Member of Congress and their staffs.
It is important to note that the United States lags behind other democracies in experimenting with more inclusive methods during the policymaking process. In the United Kingdom, for example, the UK Parliament has experimented with a variety of new digital tools to engage with constituents. These methods range from Twitter hashtags, which are now quite common given the rise in social media use by governments and elected officials, to a variety of web forums on a variety of platforms. Since June of 2015, they have also been doing digital debates, where questions from the general public are crowdsourced and later integrated into a parliamentary debate by the Member of Parliament leading the debate. Estonia, South Africa, Taiwan, France also…notable examples.
One promising new development we hope to explore more thoroughly is the U.S. Library of Congress’s recently announced legislative data App Challenge. This competition is distinct from the many hackathons that have been held on behalf of Congress in the past, in that this challenge seeks new methods not only to innovate, but also to integrate and legislate. In his announcement, the Library’s Chief Information Officer, Bernard A. Barton, Jr., stated, “An informed citizenry is better able to participate in our democracy, and this is a very real opportunity to contribute to a better understanding of the work being done in Washington. It may even provide insights for the people doing the work around the clock, both on the Hill, and in state and district offices. Your innovation and integration may ultimately benefit the way our elected officials legislate for our future.” We believe these sorts of new methods will play a crucial role in the future of engaging citizens in their democracies….(More)”.
Crowdsourcing Government: Lessons from Multiple Disciplines
Helen Liu in the Public Administration Review: “Crowdsourcing has proliferated across disciplines and professional fields. Implementers in the public sector face practical challenges, however, in the execution of crowdsourcing. This review synthesizes prior crowdsourcing research and practices from a variety of disciplines and focuses to identify lessons for meeting the practical challenges of crowdsourcing in the public sector. It identifies three distinct categories of crowdsourcing: organizations, products and services, and holistic systems. Lessons about the fundamental logic of process design—alignment, motivation, and evaluation—identified across the three categories are discussed. Conclusions drawn from past studies and the resulting evidence can help public managers better design and implement crowdsourcing in the public sector.
Practitioner Points
- Crowdsourcing studies in the public sector show that properly designed crowdsourcing platforms can empower citizens, create legitimacy for the government with the people, and enhance the effectiveness of public services and goods.
- Research suggests that crowdsourcing decisions should be based on both solutions necessary to resolve public problems and appropriate tasks for participants who have knowledge or skills.
- Evidence shows that prizes and rewards can increase participation rates, but opportunities for learning and skill building are essential for enhancing the quality of participants’ contributions.
- Studies indicate that a crowdsourcing approach empowers participants through peer review by adopting constructive competition and supportive cooperation designs in the review process.
- Studies illustrate that the establishment of an effective reputation system in the crowdsourcing process can ensure legitimate evaluation….(More)”.
Bangalore Taps Tech Crowdsourcing to Fix ‘Unruly’ Gridlock
Saritha Rai at Bloomberg Technology: “In Bangalore, tech giants and startups typically spend their days fiercely battling each other for customers. Now they are turning their attention to a common enemy: the Indian city’s infernal traffic congestion.
Cross-town commutes that can take hours has inspired Gridlock Hackathon, a contest initiated by Flipkart Online Services Pvt. for technology workers to find solutions to the snarled roads that cost the economy billions of dollars. While the prize totals a mere $5,500, it’s attracting teams from global giants Microsoft Corp., Google and Amazon.com. Inc. to local startups including Ola.
The online contest is crowdsourcing solutions for Bangalore, a city of more than 10 million, as it grapples with inadequate roads, unprecedented growth and overpopulation. The technology industry began booming decades ago and with its base of talent, it continues to attract companies. Just last month, Intel Corp. said it would invest $178 million and add more workers to expand its R&D operations.
The ideas put forward at the hackathon range from using artificial intelligence and big data on traffic flows to true moonshots, such as flying cars.
The gridlock remains a problem for a city dependent on its technology industry and seeking to attract new investment…(More)”.
Tackling Challenges in the Engagement of Citizens with Smart City Initiatives
Paper by Long Pham and Conor Linehan: “Smart City (SC) initiatives offer best possible outcomes to citizens and other stakeholders when those people are involved centrally in all stages of the project. However, undertaking design processes that facilitate citizen engagement often involves prohibitive challenges in cost, design and deployment mechanisms, particularly for small cities that have limited resources. We report on a project carried out in Cork City, a small city in Ireland, where a method inspired by crowdsourcing was used to involve local participants in decisions regarding smart city infrastructure. Academics, local government, volunteers and civil organisations came together to collaboratively design and carry out a study to represent local interests around the deployment of smart city infrastructure. Our project demonstrates a new way of translating crowdsourcing for use in government problem-solving. It was comparatively inexpensive, creative in design, and flexible but collaborative in deployment, resulting in high volume of reliable data for project prioritisation and implementation….(More)”
Legal and Ethical Issues of Crowdsourcing
Alqahtani, Bashayr et al in the International Journal of Computer Applications: “Crowdsourcing is lately developed expression which meaning that the outsourcing process of activities by crowd in the form of an ‘open call’ or a firm to an online community. An assigned task can be completed by any member of the crowd and be paid due to their efforts, also to attract the best possible ideas and approaches to boost innovation or to complete data processing tasks. Though the labor organization form was pioneered in the calculation sector, businesses companies have begun using ‘crowdsourcing’ for a various domain of tasks that they discover can be preferable completed and good achieved with crowds’ members instead of their own employees. This research will define the principle of crowdsourcing, types of it, challenges of crowdsourcing, also it will explain advantages and disadvantages and the way that firms are utilizing marketing task application crowdsourcing for the completion, discuss some of legal issues and ethical issues with regulations. Finally, this article will be completed as a paper research for crowdsourcing…(More)”.
Volunteers teach AI to spot slavery sites from satellite images
This data will then be used to train machine learning algorithms to automatically recognise brick kilns in satellite imagery. If computers can pinpoint the location of such possible slavery sites, then the coordinates could be passed to local charities to investigate, says Kevin Bales, the project leader, at the University of Nottingham, UK.
South Asian brick kilns are notorious as modern-day slavery sites. There are an estimated 5 million people working in brick kilns in South Asia, and of those nearly 70 per cent are thought to be working there under duress – often to pay off financial debts.
However, no one is quite sure how many of these kilns there are in the so-called “Brick Belt”, a region that stretches across parts of Pakistan, India and Nepal. Some estimates put the figure at 20,000, but it may be as high as 50,000.
Bales is hoping that his machine learning approach will produce a more accurate figure and help organisations on the ground know where to direct their anti-slavery efforts.
It’s great to have a tool for identifying possible forced labour sites, says Sasha Jesperson at St Mary’s University in London. But it is just a start – to really find out how many people are being enslaved in the brick kiln industry, investigators still need to visit every site and work out exactly what’s going on there, she says….
So far, volunteers have identified over 4000 potential slavery sites across 400 satellite images taken via Google Earth. Once these have been checked several times by volunteers, Bales plans to use these images to teach the machine learning algorithm what kilns look like, so that it can learn to recognise them in images automatically….(More)”.