Britain's Conservative Party Offers £1 Million Prize for New Crowdsourcing Platform
John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com
It is additional strong validation for our industry.
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Tories offer £1m prize for voters' website
A £1m taxpayer-funded prize will be offered by the Conservatives in a
competition to produce an online platform that can harness 'the
collective wisdom of the British people'
Olivia Martin
The Tories today promised to give £1m of taxpayers' money as a cash
prize to the person or team who manages to "harness the wisdom of the
crowd" by producing an online platform to solve "common problems".
The winning product must deliver an effective and available site for
the public to post their ideas on, as well as a truly beneficial
outcome for it to be worthy of the £1m payout, which the party says
would be the biggest prize offered by a British government in the
modern era.
Ideas "to get the ball rolling" suggested by the Tories include:
identifying and rooting out wasteful government spending, designing
credit card bills that anyone can understand; rating the quality of
schools and hospitals; making government information clear and simple;
and – they say – picking the England squad for the 2010 World Cup.
Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said the party would "only
give this money away... if there is a solution".
But he said: "Conservatives believe that the collective wisdom of the
British people is much greater than that of a bunch of politicians or
so-called experts. And new technology now allows us to harness that
wisdom like never before. So at this time of year, when families and
friends are getting together, we're announcing a new idea to help the
British people get together to help solve the problems that matter to
them.
"There are currently no technological platforms that enable in-depth
online collaboration on the scale required by government – this prize
is a good and cost-effective way of getting one."
Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Look at the U-turns over
childcare vouchers, over the 10p tax, over the NHS IT system. It is
crazy that these things have gone wrong when you've got lots and lots
of retired health professionals, retired policemen, people in the
teaching profession, who have huge knowledge and expertise and had
they been able to contribute better to the policymaking process we
could have avoided some of these problems."
Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrats' spokeswoman, said: "This prize
is clearly a publicity stunt and a total waste of taxpayers' money.
There are already a multitude of ways to communicate with large
numbers of people online, from Facebook to discussion groups.
"Maybe the Tories are so out of touch they don't know what's out
there, but they shouldn't waste £1m of public money reinventing the
wheel."
Tessa Jowell, the Cabinet Office minister, predicted the idea would be
quietly dropped by the Conservatives in the new year.
"Families want serious, thought-through policies that meet their
aspirations, not short-term public relations stunts. Labour already
makes full use of collaboration and social networking technologies to
consult with people."
Original story here... http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/30/tories-prize-voters-website/print