UK Government launches online crowdsourcing initiative

Deputy PM Nick Clegg will this morning unveil the Coalition Government’s first significant online crowdsourcing initiative, aided by a raft of digital tools. The initiative, supported by a website – Your Freedom – as well as a Dialogue app, will garner opinion and ideas from the public on which laws it feels are unnecessary and infringe on civil liberties, to influence future policy making. The website has been set up to allow as many people in the UK as possible to put forward their ideas on what laws and regulations should be done away with, Clegg will say this morning. The initiative forms an important part of the Government’s intentions to slash bureaucracy and red tape, with sourced ideas feeding into reforms including the proposed Freedom Bill and the streamlining of regulation, particularly for businesses, social enterprise and other third-sector organisations. It’s the first time a UK government has run a crowdsourcing project of this nature and scale, according to Chris Quigley, director of Delib, the firm which developed the Dialogue app. The app was initially created for the Obama Administration in the US, and has been used extensively by US government agencies in the last 12 months. Those wishing to take part in the initiative will have options to submit ideas or to rate and comment on other people’s. The overall aim, according to Quigley, is to not just share law reform ideas with the Government, but to help collectively analyse the ideas to sort the best from the worst.
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