Crowdsourcing Government?
Kublai – A Social Network of Creatives for
Regional Development
Alberto Cottica
Version 1.1 of 20 November 2008
Released under Creative Commons 2.5 attribution noncommercial
http://www.progettokublai.net

E-government 2.0
● harvests participation and collective intelligence
to design policy
● “transparency is the killer app”

Regional development policy issues
in Italy
● Adverse selection: well-funded policy measures
attract opportunists, who focus on attracting
subsidies rather than on local development
● Information asymmetries lead to process
managent skills dominating on vision, creativity
and achievement
● Lack of trust – getting worse

PEOPLE, not capital, are the
engine of development!
Meet Italy's creatives, see their work, hear their
stories at:
http://current.com/users/ProgettoKublai/all/0.htm

Solution: a social network of creatives
for regional development
● No money handouts (scares off greedy types!) but
endorsement to approach existing policy measures
and investors
● Talk to people from a creative industries background,
strongest on core creative competence and vision
● Strong commitment to openness, meritocracy,
transparency, peering (hacker ethics!) to foster trust
● Small project - €250K for the first year (all-in)
● => Kublai - a project of the Ministry of Economic
Development – Department of Development Policies

The community on ning.com
● 360+ registered users
from all areas of
creativity (since May
2008)
● 46 projects (since July
2008)

Keeping in touch
● project fora on the Ning
● a blog
● an island in Second Life for help desks and
meetings

Creative Development Awards
● the best projects honoured at Kublai Camp –
Rome 24th January 2009
● win Ministry endorsement + € 5000 in high-
profile consultancy
● Take part, be there! All ideas welcome.

The future (if any)
bring the first wave of projects to implementation
●
consolidate the community
●
more user-generated project coaching
●
open up to public and private partners
●
●towards a diverse ecosystem for creativity and
innovation, from Vcs to foundations to policy
●all of the above is useless if the community does
not continuously reaffirm its belief in its values and
the people within it

A social network is an act of love