The Crowdsourcing phenomenon is about to hit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but will it be a Jeffersonian triumph or a Machiavellian misstep?

Obama’s team has put together a crowdsourcing initiative, called the Citizen’s Briefing Book, which encourages citizens to submit ideas on everything and anything from energy policy to national defense.

To date, Obama’s team has done a good job of using social media in their communications, as can most recently be seen in the change.gov website. I wonder if the idea was inspired by the New York Times, who used a facebook page to essentially do the same thing.  The Times received 35,000 suggestions on their page and has since created an interesting microsite with sugestions for the incoming president.  Click here to look through it. If nothing else, this is a noteworthy bit of news reporting for its use of social media to conduct such a broad survey - although the editorial staff of the Times had nothing to do with the survey (it seems to have been collected by the Times marketing department).

But can and will this kind of government by actually work?  Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, DeToqueville…well, this could quickly turn into a history of western civilization discussion but lets not go there.

Because it is for now the means, and not the ends that interest me.

For this kind of thing to work, Obama’s team really has to make a commitment.  Or, well, the CEO - Obama -  really has to make a commitment. It is the “post-promote-discuss-see” approach to crowdsourcing and it is the last of those four that is probably the most important.  Showing how participation makes a difference is the payoff in the Social media world.  But without a solid commitment to the “see”, implementing crowdsourcing is at best trendy and at worst patronizing.

It is an innovative attempt on behalf of the Obama-Biden transition team, but without a solid commitment to doing something with the results - besides presenting them to the president in a book, the whole idea reaks a little of Machiavelli, who, if I remember right, believed that the prince should give the appearance that he is listening to keep the masses satisfied, but not let their opinions motivate him.

I’d be interested to hear of other government-based crowdsourcing intitiatives.  Have they worked?

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