The First Lever of Open: Smarter Governance -- Getting Knowledge In

The Governance Lab @ NYU (http://thegovlab.org)

September 2013

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The GovLab has outlined three ways in which institutions are using technology to become more “open” to participation and collaboration from those outside their boundaries. Our goal is to study these different ways of working and to understand through experimentation which ones work to tackle which kinds of problems. In the first model (Smarter Governance), institutions are opening themselves to getting better input to inform how they make decisions. In the second model (Open Data Governance), institutions are publishing the data they hold and inviting those outside to collaborate in the development of solutions informed by data. In both the first and second paradigm, decision-making rests with the institution. In the third model (Devolved Governance), however, institutions are sharing decision-making power with those outside their organizational boundaries.

The GovLab's initial focus is theory, research and experimentation on Smarter Governance. The goal of this work will be to answer: How do institutions inform how they solve problems and make decisions? We want to have a better understanding of how organizations can identify expertise, match experts to problems, crowdsource input effectively and efficiently and create incentives for people to share their know-how.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.