A Model Proposal for Local Governments to Increase Citizen Involvement in the Age of Information Society and E-Government: Crowdsourcing

Abstract

Crowdsourcing is a form of citizen participation in which an institution has a question submits to citizens via the internet in order to get citizens to think about innovative solutions to the problem. Several municipalities around the world have already used this means, but it has not yet been clear exactly how they can use it and which preconditions play a role in this. Thus, this chapter argued the concept of citizen involvement in the age of ICT by emphasizing the two related terms e-government and e-local government, then secondly the chapter underlined the importance of the necessity of citizen participation in the policymaking process. In the third section of this chapter, it has been argued the crowdsourcing concept as a tool of participation in the age of ICT. Then finally the paper outlined a model for local governments that may use the crowdsourcing approach in the decision-making process.