Cut-back or Innovate?

By Dustin Haisler, Director, Government Innovation

In this day and age, government agencies are facing unparalleled challenges and constraints. Historically, the phrase 'cutting back' was the only option available for agencies facing these tough challenges. But from an operational prospective, 'cutting back' doesn't solve our challenges, it merely dilutes them for a brief period of time. So now the question is raised: What's the right alternative to cutting back within government?

Option #2: Innovation
It's intriguing to look at private-sector companies, because many of them are faced with the same challenges as government. At times; however, most private-sector companies don't consider cutting back an option. They choose to innovate; to tap the wisdom of their crowds (whether this includes employees, customers, etc.) to help them adapt to changing market conditions. So what would government look like if it did the same?

Manor, Texas
Last summer, while I was still Assistant City Manager and CIO for the City of Manor, I worked with a talented team at the Persuasive Technology Lab of Stanford University to find a new way to engage Manor citizens and leverage their knowledge and expertise. It was decided that we would need to utilize an ideation platform to manage the influx of new ideas and suggestions from our citizens. We knew that changing the culture of traditional government/citizen interaction was going to be an uphill battle. We had to find a tool that focused on more than just idea collection; we had to find one that persuaded people to engage in the platform over the long-run.

After browsing and testing a multitude of idea platforms; our team discovered the Spigit-platform and selected it to launch Manor Labs for the City of Manor. There were a few big features that stood out in our decision:

1. Automatic Idea Graduation: The platform can be customized to automatically advance ideas when they meet a certain threshold of votes, comments, page views, approvals, etc. This meant there would be no need to assign a staff member to steer ideas in the right direction; the platform would be truly crowdsourced.


2. Game-Mechanics: We knew our citizens had 8 to 5 jobs and the last thing they wanted to do was submit ideas to make their government more efficient, but using game-mechanics made the process fun and less intimidating. One of my favorite features is that participants receive a virtual currency in customizable quantities based on what they do on the platform. For example, on Manor's platform, if a user submitted an idea they will receive 5,000 'Innobucks' and if their idea was implemented they will receive 300,000 Innobucks. They could then take their Innobucks and either invest in another citizen's idea or trade it in at the store for honorary things, such as "Being Mayor for the Day."


3. Transparency: Another important aspect of sustainability is platform transparency. We setup our external platform to allow citizens to see what we could see. If we could not implement someone's idea, we had to provide a transparent reason why, which was also visible to the rest of the participants.

Bottom-Line
The platform has proved to be a success and has been responsible for the implementation of 6 ideas mid-budget year. In addition, I was so confident in the platform's ability to help government agencies innovate that I joined the Spigit team as the Director of Government Innovation. Innovation in government is paramount, and Spigit's tried-and-tested solution can deliver.