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AbstractCrowdsourcing serves as a distributed problem‐solving production model for modern governments, and it has the potential to transform citizens into coproducers of public services. To consolidate the theoretical basis, this article provides a typology for crowdsourcing public services based on theories of coproduction, public sector volunteerism, and government–citizen relations. This typology includes two dimensions—the policy stage, and the functionality of citizens' effort—and four types of crowdsourcing, namely, complementary crowdsourcing in service implementation, supplementary crowdsourcing in service implementation, complementary crowdsourcing in policy and service design, and supplementary crowdsourcing in policy design. Four cases are selected for illustration. Designing crowdsourcing based on citizen and government relationships will help designers align goals and tasks to the right coproducers and enhance relationships in a democratic way. Furthermore, this typology will allow the field to systematically and collectively build knowledge.

One of the consequences of the transition from British to Chinese rule in Hong Kong has been the development of parallel social service delivery systems. On the one hand, the welfare bureaucracy is characterised by contractual relationships between the government and nonprofit organisations and is shaped by western ideas associated with new public management. On the other hand, the political machine is composed of locally elected representatives, community-based organisations (CBOs) and local residents and reflects traits of Chinese communism. This article investigates the interactions and strategies adopted by actors in these two systems in their attempt to control the delivery of social services. Crucially, it explores how these two systems interact and the impact on policy implementation. Evidence shows that CBOs provide a critical brokering role between elected political officials, the public and nonprofit organisations that is critical to maintaining the functionality of Hong Kong's parallel social service delivery systems.

This study examines network factors in the cross-national diffusion of a recent crowdsourcing innovation in the public sector, called Peer to Patent. Policy diffusion theory, as applied to informational network exchange, suggests that information about innovation will be communicated through social networks among policy decision makers. Building on case studies from five countries-"the United States, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom-"that have adopted Peer to Patent, this study finds that the pattern of adoption is best explained by the underlying network structure of professional and institutional actors that allow policymakers to exchange ideas and learn from others. The informational network framework includes epistemic communities, international organizations, and globalized corporate entities and is affected by other mediating factors such as regulations, peer-to-peer relations, and technology. Policy transfer is thus a complex concept that includes multiple streams of transnational communication and exchange.

AbstractCrowdsourcing has proliferated across disciplines and professional fields. Implementers in the public sector face practical challenges, however, in the execution of crowdsourcing. This review synthesizes prior crowdsourcing research and practices from a variety of disciplines and focuses to identify lessons for meeting the practical challenges of crowdsourcing in the public sector. It identifies three distinct categories of crowdsourcing: organizations, products and services, and holistic systems. Lessons about the fundamental logic of process design—alignment, motivation, and evaluation—identified across the three categories are discussed. Conclusions drawn from past studies and the resulting evidence can help public managers better design and implement crowdsourcing in the public sector.

Crowdsourcing is a phenomenon emerging in various sectors and industries that provides an opportunity for governments to collaborate with the public to generate information, deliver public services, or facilitate policy innovation. This review paper synthesizes prior research and practices on crowdsourcing from a variety of disciplines and focuses on the purpose, crowd, motivation, process design and outcomes. A process map for governments to design crowdsourcing is generated and three key actions are highlighted, namely incentive design, communication, and information aggregation.

Governments are increasingly adopting online platforms to engage the public and allow a broad and diverse group of citizens to participate in the planning of government policies. To understand the role of crowds in the online public policy process, we analyse participant contributions over time in two crowd‐based policy processes, the Future Melbourne wiki and the Open Government Dialogue. Although past evaluations have shown the significance of public consultations by expanding the engaged population within a short period of time, our empirical case studies suggest that a small number of participants contribute a disproportionate share of ideas and opinions. We discuss the implications of our initial examination for the future design of engagement platforms.

This article explores why people are poor and on welfare, according to social service agency directors who administer programs that serve current and former welfare recipients. Based on data from 295 local social service agency directors in Indiana, 75% of respondents believe educational and labor market barriers are important causes of long-term poverty and welfare, 44% believe cultural transmission or learned lifestyles are causes, 23% believe poor attitudes and work ethics as well as laziness or lack of motivation among the poor are causes, and 8% believe government assistance causes dependency among recipients and makes them poor. Evidence suggests that agency directors who believe that poor attitudes and behavior of the poor primarily cause poverty and welfare are more likely to be in organizations that did not ration services since welfare reform or engage in political activities designed to support these changes. In contrast, agency directors who maintain educational and labor market barriers as primary causes of poverty and welfare are more likely to be in organizations that have adopted new programs and developed collaborative strategies with other organizations since welfare reform.