Innovation foundation Nesta has published a report and framework for public sector bodies to use collective intelligence based on digital platforms to deal with community challenges.
Its Centre for Collective Intelligence Design has been working with The Governance Lab, a US group focused on using data in problem solving, on techniques to harness ideas and skills from the public.
The report says collective intelligence can help make public services better and more inclusive and that it should be part of how an institution thinks about solving problems in the 21st century.
It highlights examples such as the GoodSAM platform developed in the UK, which has been used to recruit and manage 750,000 volunteers to provide care for people self-isolating because of Covid-19. The platform has other roles such as crowdsourcing people to carry out resuscitation to cardiac arrest and providing advanced video triage services to ambulance and police 999 and 111 services.
Nesta said that despite such successes, many collective intelligence projects are often short lived or fail to achieve impact as governments struggle to integrate collective intelligence in long term strategies.
Lessons and playbook
In response, it has laid out 10 lessons for the sustained use of the practice. These include using open source tools, combining specific tasks with a broader mission, securing steady funding, and engaging with crowds of people. It has also published a Collective Intelligence Design Playbook to help design and deliver projects
Peter Baeck (pictured), co-head of the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design, said: “We know collective intelligence and tools such as crowdsourcing and citizen science are vital in extending our problem solving capacity, and it can play a key role in combatting the complex issues caused by Covid-19.
“Too often those working in the public sector do not know how to design crowd and institution collaboration and therefore struggle to engage with the public efficiently and act upon their ideas to solve problems. We follow the same approaches, with no different results.
“Working more openly and collaboratively requires public bodies to develop new capabilities and procedures. We want to support the sector to meet this challenge.”
Image from Nesta
