The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines crowdsourcing as the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.
The Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act confirms the role of crowdsourcing to solve problems while engaging the public:
“It is the sense of Congress that granting Federal science agencies the direct, explicit authority to use crowdsourcing and citizen science will encourage its appropriate use to advance Federal science agency missions and stimulate and facilitate broader public participation in the innovation process, yielding numerous benefits to the Federal Government and citizens who participate in such projects"
Crowdsourced data is not accurate, not vetted, and not high-quality
Crowdsourcing is just social media monitoring and listening
Credit: DHS SMWG
When deciding to adopt crowdsourcing as a means to enhance your emergency management capabilities, start with assessing your current capacity. The DHS Social Media Working Group (SMWG) for Emergency Services and Disaster Management Program (formerly the Virtual Social Media Working Group) and DHS First Responders Group published the guide From Concept to Reality: Operationalizing Social Media for Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. This Guide can be used to follow the crawl, walk, run method for growing your crowdsourcing capability.
As outlined in Table 2 in From Concept to Reality: Operationalizing Social Media for Preparedness, Response, and Recovery, a maturity model contains three key elements, People and Process, Governance, and Technology. Using the Crowdsourcing Toolkit for Emergency Management will give you examples for all three elements.
Understanding the legal concerns around crowdsourcing is an important first step. Excellent resources on law and policy can be found in the Citizen Science Toolkit.
Why do you want to use crowdsourcing at your organization? What problems are you trying to solve? DHS Science and Technology published Social Media Business Case Guide that can be adapted for building your crowdsourcing business case.
Following the toolkit sections will walk you through building a crowdsourcing capability. Like everything in emergency management, you can not develop a comprehensive program overnight. Use the crawl, walk, run method as you move forward, gradually building the capability over time. Start first by working with your leadership and partners to set your agency’s goals and business case.