collaboration :: cooperation :: coordination
Citizen Innovation:
Harnessing collaboration for service delivery,
legislation and policy development.
Darren Sharp, Senior Consultant
Twitter: @dasharp
24 June 2009 :: Web 2.0 in Government Conference :: Sydney

Company Profile
• Collabforge was formed in 2007
• Web strategy and IT development for
collaborative engagement
• Collaboration process improvement: analysis and
integration of best practice tools and process
• Experience in delivering mission critical,
high-profile Gov 2.0 initiatives

User-led Innovation
• The rise of participatory culture
- production/consumption
- professional/amateur
- work/leisure
• Related to ‘peer production’ Image: NESTA
• Crowdsourcing - distributed problem-solving

User-led Innovation
• As it becomes easier to connect,
communicate and share it also becomes
easier to create and co-create
• Sources of innovation are shifting
• Leveraging the participation of:
- audiences
- customers
- users

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

Citizen Innovation
• Process of collective activity between:
- citizens and;
- government agencies
- public sector organisations
- public servants
- policy makers
- elected representatives/legislators

3Cs of Collective Activity
Collective
Process Output
Activity
patterns across
disparate elements pulled
Coordination disparate elements
into a relational space
become visible
individuals comply to
aggregated value of
Cooperation process / set of
individual contributions
instructions
participants of a group co-created innovation
Collaboration add/edit/deletes same pool representing a shared
of content understanding
Elliott, Dr Mark Alan (2007) Stigmergic Collaboration: A Theoretical Framework for
Mass Collaboration. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.

The real promise of Gov 2.0
• Using ‘citizen innovation’ to harness the expertise
of people who use:
- public sector data
- public services
- government policy
- legislation

Sounds good: when do we get some?
Citizen innovation is already here.
It’s just not evenly distributed.
Thanks William Gibson!

User-led Innovation
Google’s Victorian Bushfires Map

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

Power Now
• Sharing p2p resources
- physical, tactical, digital, social
• Decentralised coordination/cooperation/collaboration
- grass-roots, bottom-up and emergent
• Collective intelligence
- distributed, real-time, always-on
• Self-organisation
- group-forming, weak ties, exponential scaling

Service Design & Delivery

Planning

Policy Development

Drafting of Legislation

Roadmap for Citizen Innovation
1) Identify lead citizens

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation
Tom Wood

Roadmap for Citizen Innovation
1) Identify lead citizens
2) Provide access to open data, tools and APIs

User-led Innovation

Roadmap for Citizen Innovation
1) Identify lead citizens
2) Provide access to open data, tools and APIs
3) Build user communities

User-led Innovation

User-led Innovation

Roadmap for Citizen Innovation
1) Identify lead citizens
2) Provide access to open data, tools and APIs
3) Build user communities
4) Reward collective activity

User-led Innovation

Roadmap for Citizen Innovation
1) Identify lead citizens
2) Provide access to open data, tools and APIs
3) Build user communities
4) Reward collective activity
5) Engage in genuine co-creation activities

User-led Innovation

Summary
• The rise of participatory culture
- social web makes it easy to connect, share & co-create
• Citizen Innovation
- process of collective activity (the 3Cs)
• Gov 2.0 : thinking and acting strategically
- collaborate with the people who use your services
• The nature of power has shifted
- distributed, emergent, self-organising and non-linear
• Gov needs to be agile and amplify its role as enabler
- become a trusted partner in citizen innovation

Thank you!
Darren Sharp, Senior Consultant
+61 (0)419 314 655
Darren.Sharp@Collabforge.com
Twitter: @dasharp