CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Prest, Emma |
|---|---|
| Title | Citizensourcing: Harnessing the power of the crowds to monitor public services |
| Summary | Citizen participation is considered to be the cornerstone of any well-functioning democracy and the Internet has brought a plethora of new ways through which to encourage this. This paper investigates a new form of e-participation: citizensourcing. Thie emerging concept draws on ideas of participatory and deliberative democracy within the context of e-governmet. Citizens are seen as untapped sources of knowledge that can contribute to improvng the functioning of government. The question “How can citizensourcing be harnessed to monitor public service delivery?” is explored through the analysis of a case study, FixMyStreet.com. An assessment framework is developed for evaluating citizensourcing inititiatives and applied to the case which was analyzed based on interviews and comparisons with international versions of the website. The paper concludes that FixMyStreet is a user-friendly and popular site that works well for citizens as a reporing mechanism, but has not been embraced by local government. For citizensourcing to succeed at improving monitoring and delivery of public services, it needs support from government to integrate online and offline process and to commit to making internal processes transparent. |
| Supervisor | Kristina Irion |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/prest_emma.pdf |
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