In recent years the concept and reality of crowdsourcing have been buzzing in the private sector. Crowdsourcing is a concept in which the crowd (or general public) is used as a source of labor, idea generation, or problem identification. This crowd is typically engaging online, though we extend the definition to include all telecommunication technologies.

As with any good private sector practice there is now some pushing for crowdsourcing to be used in government. This paper provides an overview of the concept of crowdsourcing, examples of its use in the private and public sectors, and develops a framework for how governments can crowdsourcing to solve problems or engage with their citizens. Our framework is illustrated with a number of cases from current or past uses of crowdsourcing in government.