What’s your idea? Crowdsourcing in the city of Ghent.

Posted on Mar 10, 2011 in Blog

This contribution describes a crowdsourcing experiment conducted in the context of the SMARTiP project by IBBT and the city of Ghent (Belgium). It is an abridged version of an article written for, and presented at, the conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) at Istanbul 2011.

In the city of Ghent, IBBT, Alcatel-Lucent and the city council want to develop a ‘smart engagement’ application. In order to generate ideas for these ‘smart (city) engagement’ apps we initiated a crowdsourcing initiative. Crowdsourcing websites can be conceptualized as Web 2.0 platforms, enabling internet users to get involved and create content. Crowdsourcing-processes involve three different stakeholders: the individuals forming ‘the crowd’, the companies or organizations looking to benefit from the crowd input, and an intermediation platform, the so-called ‘crowdsourcing enabler’.

Figure 1: screenshot of the crowdsourcing platform ‘Mijndigitaalideevoorgent’

 Our crowdsourcing platform was launched in the beginning of April 2011. The platform was based on proprietary software of UserVoice, a firm providing hosted feedback forums, which allow customers to create, discuss, and vote for ideas. The crowdsourcing platform, called www.mijndigitaalideevoorgent.be (‘mydigitalideaforghent’), encompassed an online forum structured around users providing actionable ideas and users ‘voting up’ the best ideas to the top (with an extra constraint of having a limited number of votes to spend, thus focusing people on what is really important to them). We asked the visitors of our crowdsourcing platform to answer the question: ‘How can ICT make it even more pleasant to live in Ghent?’. Our goal was to create a list with a broad range of applications, including ‘wild ideas’, for smart city engagement.

Although, the website’s launch got rather little press coverage, our crowdsourcing website got ‘picked up’ in the conversations on Web 2.0 platforms and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We also disseminated the URL to the crowdsourcing platform via an electronic newsletter to the university students in the city. The crowdsourcing platform was open to answers between April 1st and May 15th. In this period the website was visited by almost 5,500 unique visitors and counted almost 18,000 page views. The city blog ‘GentBlogt.be’, Facebook, Twitter and the city of Ghent’s website were amongst the top referrers to the crowdsourcing platform. More than 1400 people registered their e-mailadress on ‘Mijndigitaalideevoorgent’, enabling them to submit an idea or cast votes on already submitted ideas.

A total of 128 ideas were submitted, which received more than 4800 votes, mainly in the first week after launch. Idea submitters could choose a pre-defined category for their ideas or could leave their idea uncategorized. Especially the categories ‘E-government’, ‘Mobility’ and ‘Other’ catch the eye as they all received more than 20 ideas. On the other hand, categories such as ‘Houses’, ‘Security’ and ‘Sport’ only received a couple of ideas. This shows that the goal of our crowdsourcing initiative was understood and that ‘Mijndigitaalideevoorgent’ achieved its targeted outcome: people contributing ideas on the relation between citizens and the city (e-government), and on citizens and mobility in the city (mobility).

Especially the ideas ‘Multifunctional application or website’, ‘Digital information kiosks placed in the city’ and ‘ASUM: Automatic System for Unified Mobility’ proved to be very popular, not only in the amount of votes they received but also in the comments that were submitted on these ideas. We will discuss the top-3 ideas briefly.

• ‘Multifunctional application or website’ is a very broad idea that was further described by the submitter as: “An online application, through kiosks or smartphones, that enables you to consult in real time the bus schedules, the upcoming events in the city and all the relevant facts associated with these points-of-interest. In this app you can also find culture, leisure, tourist spots, sports accommodation etc.”. Most comments on this idea targeted the content that such a generic app should provide, or mentioned the ‘digital divide’ and the fact that not all Ghent citizens have a smartphone or internet access.

• The idea ‘Digital information kiosks placed in the city’, which received 662 votes, was described as “A means to provide information on a variety of topics such as public toilets, parking spaces, museums, … But also an input channel for the online reporting of offenses or city issues, including broken street lighting, vandalism and such”. Most comments on this idea addressed the fact that Ghent already has digital information kiosks placed in the streets and on the squares of the city, that afford citizens to consult information or report certain issues to the city council. Quite some comments suggested that the user interface of these kiosks should be merely updated.

• The idea that was ranked third through collaborative filtering was ‘ASUM: Automatic System for Unified Mobility’, described as “Would it not be wonderful to have a multi-platform application, where you simply say ‘I want to go from here to there’, and the app than calculates, based on real-time information (such as traffic jams, weather conditions, schedules of public transport, …) how to most optimally (fast, dry, quiet, …) reach your destination. The availability can also come in the unified mobility system. Credo: One problem, One app …”.  In contrast to the two previous ideas, this idea only got one comment that suggested to implement Google Transit in Ghent instead. Google Transit a service that enables people to plan a trip using public transportation.

Although our crowdsourcing initiative is only the first phase of a larger process of opportunity identification, the results seem to offer a lot of interesting and valuable knowledge and useful (and sometimes surprising) answers. In addition citizens engaged in conversation and discussions about the usefulness, fairness and relevance of some ideas and about their cost benefits ratio, in extensive forum threats. Our results reveal that participants especially emphasize generic tools or platforms: one-stop service points where they can find all the information they need on any subject. These one-stop service points should provide personalized information and should also offer affordances to start a dialogue and direct interaction with the city council or with other citizens.