Crowdsourcing Through Social Media-The Icelandic Constitution Case

The Icelandic Constitutional Council has made it possible for the public to send messages which are published on the Council’s website in order to foster a lively discussion. Thereby every citizen had the opportunity to take part to the drafting of the constitution.

Type of content: Assets
Type of asset:
Use case
Big data potential
No
Policy domains: Institutional Questions / Internal Affairs
Phase in the policy cycle:
Policy Design and Analysis
Open license availability
No
Tags: Smart City Smart Government Citizen-centred policy-making
Addresses:
SWOT Analysis for
Crowdsourcing Through Social Media-The Icelandic Constitution Case
Helpful Harmful
Internal
Strengths• Make policy makers aware of the problems
• To gather input data for the game, a farming system analysis was done in order to understand the choices a farmer faces regarding his land management, providing:
a) Insight into farmers’ choices in land management
b) Insight in the critical decision moments that farmers face for socio-economic issues and physical phenomena
c) Insight in the coping strategies and investment behaviour of farmers at critical decision moments
d) Translation of results into rules and input data for the game
Weaknesses• Many soil conservation techniques have been introduced in the area, the acceptation and wide implementation of these techniques by local communities is limited and land degradation (LD) is increasingly destructive regarding agricultural production
• Part of the communication gap between the scientific studies and policy makers comes from the working schedule of these policy makers that leaves little room studying research reports
External
Opportunities• The degradation of arable land has been an increasing problem on smallholder farmer communities
• A lot of research on LD and sustainable land management (SLM) has been done, trying to involve institutes and NGOs to improve the situation in the area.
• Using innovative communication tools [among which a computer game] in a policy maker workshop to bridge this communication gap between the scientific studies and policy makers
• Both statistical research and literature reviews have shown over the last decades that gaming has significant learning potential and increases the efficiency in instruction time
Threats• Lacks communication between these scientific studies and policy makers, especially on district level
• Simplification and limitation of the game elements employed

Comments

This is an interesting case especially as it is the first time that a constitution has been crowdsourced. However, the number of contributors has been somehow limited, showing that the level of competence necessary for such kind of contribution is not widespread in the society

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