Citizen sourcing

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Citizen sourcing is the government adoption of crowdsourcing techniques for the purposes of (1) enlisting citizens in the design and execution of government services and (2) tapping into the citizenry's collective intelligence for solutions and situational awareness. Applications of citizen sourcing include:

• The use of ideation tools by government agencies to collect ideas and suggestions from the public
• The use of problem-solving tools that allow citizens to identify and evaluate solutions to problems proposed
• The adoption of citizen reporting platforms, such as for crime or emergency response information
• The government monitoring of social media, such as Twitter, for situational awareness, such as with regard to natural disasters

Citizen sourcing has gained prominence as part of the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative and is seen, in the words of Vivek Kundra, as a way of driving "innovation by tapping into the ingenuity of the American people"^[1] to solve those problems that are too big for government to solve on its own. Similarly, David Cameron of the British Conservatives believes that citizen sourcing mechanisms and the advent of Web 2.0 technologies will help usher in "the next age of government" by truly enabling citizens to act on John Kennedy's historic call to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."^[2]