How not to crowd source
It’s like Google, innit? Let’s crowd source, and like, you know, do a wiki. And like mashable, too.
I suspect that pretty much sums up some of the thinking in Whitehall that went into the proposal for an on-line consultation to cut the deficit. The result, in which not a single proposal has been taken up, perhaps speaks for itself.
In politics, as in most things, there’s nothing so fatal for an idea as when it is half understood by those trying to apply it.
Localism and direct democracy went from being radical outsider ideas to becoming a new orthodoxy almost overnight. Yet not all of those who profess faith in them necessarily understand what they actually entail.
Take the Great Repeal Bill, as an example. It was intended as a wiki Bill, which would harness the wisdom and experience of millions of people. They, not Whitehall mandarins would write the Bill, adding idea as to which bits of red tape and regulation could be scrapped. As anyone familiar with how Wikipedia works could tell you, the project would work best if it wasn’t patronisingly overseen by SW1 people.
Yet distrustful of the people, those behind what they actually call “HM Government Your Freedom” site, run it very much on HMG's terms.
The results? Lots of stuff about cannabis. So much, they’ve had to shut down part of the site. Many fewer ideas on cutting business red tape.
Compare that to the genuinely open Great Repeal Bill site on Wikiversity. Policed as it is by the thousands of folk who've contributed to the site, it has hundreds of ideas to help small businesses by cutting red tape.
Counter intuitively, the more open the site, the more people have a sense of ownership, so the more liberal the content.
Crowd sourcing requires you to trust the crowd. If you treat it as a mob, it’ll behave like one.