How not to crowdsource government
The UK government’s much-publicised attempt to get the general public involved in running the country via crowdsourcing may have elicited almost 10,000 posts – but no government department is willing to alter policy
after taking a peek at the wisdom of the crowd, according to local reports. The departmental responses were published quietly last week despite the ConDem government being in the middle of marketing its Big Society message.
“You have to give the government some credit for trying to do this, but badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all,” Simon Burall, director of Involve, a group advising bodies on consultation, told the Guardian. “They diminish trust and reduce the prospect that people will engage again.”
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