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Report now Available – Challenge.Gov: Landscape Analysis + Citizen and Agency Perspective

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I have just completed the first draft of my report on the Challenge.gov platform. This paper has been a few months in the making and builds on my recent work in community intelligence platforms, citizen apps, and innovation in the public sector. To receive a copy of the report, please send me an email.

Challenge.Gov: Landscape Analysis and Implications from the Citizen and Agency Perspective

To solve complex social and policy challenges we need to broaden the conversations, involve more minds and talent, and collaborate effectively and efficiently. Traditionally, public agencies have felt the burden to tackle challenges by relying on their own internal intellectual capital or through structured contracting with external partners. Seldom could an individual citizen share his or her talent, expertise, and skills with a public agency directly. Today, public agencies are becoming more participatory, inclusive, and transparent in how they engage with citizens as well as with each other. Challenge.gov is the crowdsourcing platform for US federal agencies that seek to engage citizens, leverage collective intelligence, and tackle complex social and technical challenges. In this paper we report on an exploratory landscape analysis of the competitions run on Challege.gov. We interviewed citizens who took part in competitions on Challenge.gov as well as public managers and government executives to understand their motivations, experiences, lessons learned, and future plans. Drawing on these interviews, we arrive at a set of actionable guidelines presented through implications to improve the state of competitions hosted by Challenge.gov. 

Acknowledgments: This project was made possible through funding received from the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Tim Moon and Akshay Bhagwatwar served as research associates for the project. I am grateful to the assistance provided by Eric Park and Lauren Bulka during the project. I also thank all solution contributors to challenges and public managers who designed challenges that participated in our interviews. All errors and omissions are solely my responsibility. I acknowledge the thoughtful discussion and comments from participants at the NSF Workshop on Participatory Challenge Platforms with a Public Intent. The views represented in this paper are our own, and do not represent official positions of IBM, any of its affiliates, or the NSF.

Community Intelligence Platforms: The Case of Open Government

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Akshay Bhagwatwar (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University) and I have a paper accepted at the Eighteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), to be held in Seattle, Washington, August 9-12, 2012. This paper builds on our ongoing work in policy informatics, citizen apps, and design of participatory platforms.

Community Intelligence Platforms: The Case of Open Government

The focus on collaborative and participatory governance has led to interest in studying how ‘intelligence’ in citizen communities can be leveraged towards creating robust solutions for complex social and policy problems. In this paper, we present four models that uncover the process of leveraging community intelligence. We analyze multiple case studies that capture the varying roles of citizens and public agencies in the problem-solving process. Employing Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation as an analytical tool, we outline the strengths and weaknesses of each model, and suggest design recommendations for the development of participatory platforms for open government.