This study offers an overview of crowdsourcing as a resource for development, crisis response and post-conflict recovery. The paper reviews the factors necessary for crowdsourcing success (vision, trust, human capital, among others) and the challenges. It provides examples from important crowdsourcing and interactive mapping phenomena and initiatives in Haiti, Libya, Sudan and Guinea, among others. Most of these examples were taken from personal experience, and their accuracy was checked with key actors. Crowdsourcing can be used to inform and consult citizens, thereby increasing government accountability to citizens.
Inherent in the theoretical approach is that broader, unencumbered participation in governance is an objectively positive and democratic aim. It also assumes that government transparency and citizen empowerment can increase a government’s accountability to its citizens and correct poor performance, although not without challenges. Whether for tracking flows of aid, reporting on poor government performance or organising grassroots movements, crowdsourcing has potential to change the reality of civic participation in many developing countries.
Key Findings:
- The effectiveness of governance systems can be substantially increased by social media applications facilitating real-time data collection, categorisation, and redistribution from crowds to crowds—for example, tactical mapping and reporting in emergencies, sharing of market information or community planning.
- The greater the numbers and the stronger the group identification with objectives, the harder it becomes for governments to ignore them. Near real-time tracking and mapping of data by crowds of citizens create pressure for more transparency, better social accountability, and the imposition of sanctions. In particular, the resulting live public maps can help to synchronise shared awareness.
- Greater effectiveness of state and non-state actors can be achieved by using crowdsourced data and deliberations to inform and monitor the provision of services.
Recommendations:
- Crowdsourcing systems present donors with an opportunity to promote local ownership and facilitate broader participation in development and governance.
- Ownership of the crowdsourcing initiative is a key issue, both on the side of government and on the side of potential users. The willingness and personal engagement of volunteers is based on a vision or specific objective that an official donor or government institution may not have. An initiative that is perceived to be externally driven will only work in an emergency, crisis, or similar short-term context. However, donors can play a pivotal role in facilitation.
- Official institutions need to find ways to cooperate with the existing online communities and to provide information and facilitate crowdsourced processes.
- In a fragile state, donors can make a crucial contribution at the level of the enabling environment.
- Donors possess the convening power to bring all major stakeholders to the table. Donors can create linkages with and trust of a crowdsourcing initiative, especially in a fragile state where strong initial government support may not be an option.
- Crucial conditions for success are to design the intervention as a process, not a project, and to allow the data generated through participatory mapping and crowdsourcing to guide overall planning decisions.
