Our Research
Engagements We Have Studied
Smarter State
Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development (Oecd): Observatory For Public Sector Innovation
This Library Connects Distributed Innovators to Information and to One Another
DetailsSmarter State
Environmental Protection Agency: One Epa Skills Marketplace
This Program Helps Civil Servants Break Out of Silos and Create Project Teams across the Agency.
DetailsSmarter State
Novagob
Creating a community of Spanish speaking public employees across national and institutional borders
DetailsSmarter State
Office Of Management And Budget: Max.Gov
The governmentwide collaboration site whose robust authentication system enables working and sharing knowledge across agency boundaries
DetailsSmarter State
City Of Sao Paulo: Agents Of Open Government
Brazil's largest city is embarking on a massive experiment to have citizens educate its public employees.
DetailsSmarter State
Torfaen County Borough Council: Wisdom Bank Torfaen
This neighbor-helping-neighbor expert network attempts to replace the pub conversation
Details
Virtual Communities
Building a racial justice community around compassion and empathy
White People. DOING Something.
DetailsVirtual Communities
Surviving Hijab
More than 900,000 women are supporting one another to overcome hardship
DetailsVirtual Communities
Subtle Asian Traits
1.8 million Asians living around the world connecting over a common identity
DetailsVirtual Communities
Essex Coronavirus Action
Mobilizing Essex residents and Facebook group leaders for coronavirus response
DetailsVirtual Communities
Clube da Alice
500,000 women are finding empowerment through entrepreneurship
DetailsVirtual Communities
HumanKind Global
Volunteers fulfill more than 25,000 requests for pandemic-related help
DetailsVirtual Communities
African Mums in Deutschland
How 4,100 mothers built an online niche in Germany
DetailsSmarter State
Mayor's Office of New York: Volunteer Language Bank
This expert network is matching the supply of multilingual civil servants to the demand for translation services
DetailsSmarter State
The World Band: Skillfinder
This Expert Network Accelerates The Search For Talent
DetailsSmarter State
Health and Human Services: HHS Profiles
Using Expert Networking to Improve Safety and Efficiency of Medical Device Review
DetailsSmarter State
Department of Defense: Aristotle
Making Skills and Know How More Searchable at the Department of Defense
Details
CrowdLaw
Congressional Science Policy Initiative
More than 600 volunteer scientists across the USA informing the work of congress
Details
Collective Intelligence
WeEuropeans
1.7 million Europeans help draft policies to reboot the European project
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Abre
Nonprofit helps city build capacity for collective intelligence projects
DetailsCollective Intelligence
AIR Louisville / Propeller Health
Using GPS-enabled inhalers, the Louisville Metro Government tracked asthma/COPD incidents and decreased rescue inhaler use by 82% among equipped participants
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Civic Bridge
By working with private sector technologists and designers, the City of San Francisco taps pro bono talent worth millions
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Decidim Helsinki
Helsinki uses participatory budgeting to enable public engagement in urban policymaking
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Flint Neighborhood Inventory / Flint Property Portal
Data crowdsourced from residents helps Flint secure $US67.5 million to restore blighted neighborhoods
DetailsCollective Intelligence
iPaidABribe
An Indian nonprofit created a platform to enable public reporting of bribery and now crowdsources data from more than 1,000 cities
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Sustainable Neighborhoods Program
Lakewood tapped residents' passion for improving their neighborhoods to create a community-led sustainability workforce
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Listening to Africa
To track unfolding crises the World Bank Group used mobile phone surveys to communicate directly with the people experiencing them
DetailsCollective Intelligence
New Start Career Network
Network of volunteer career coaches helps long-term unemployed in New Jersey to find a new job
DetailsCollective Intelligence
The Bristol Approach
Bristol citizens work with nonprofit arts organisation to collect and analyse air quality data
DetailsCollective Intelligence
York Neighborhood Approach
To help residents experiencing loneliness the City Council of York, England fosters active citizens and collective action
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Sharing the Roads Safely (Cycling Citizens' Jury)
South Australia turned to a deliberative citizens' jury and cut fatal and serious cycling casualties by 28 percent
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Governador Pergunta (Governor Asks)
Governor Asks uses online and face-to-face outreach to engage almost a quarter million participants in one month
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Smarter Crowdsourcing for Zika
To combat the Zika virus the Governance Lab collaborated with national and local government partners to crowdsource solutions from global experts
DetailsCollective Intelligence
All of Us Research Program
The National Institutes of Health is engaging one million people in the effort to accelerate medical breakthroughs
Details
Collective Intelligence
PetaBencana (Risk Map)
Indonesia crowdsources flood information to improve disaster response
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Cidade Democratica
Cidade Democratica develops a tool to crowdsource solutions to corruption and other public problems in Brazil
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Syria Tracker
Syria Tracker uses secure and accessible reporting mechanisms to document human rights abuses
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Congressional Science Policy Initiative
More than 600 volunteer scientists across the USA are informing the work of Congress
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Challenge.gov
More than 100 Federal agencies crowdsource solutions through Challenge.gov
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Finnish Citizens' Initiative
Crowdsourcing legislative proposals in Finland
DetailsCollective Intelligence
PulsePoint and GoodSAM
Smartphone apps that crowdsource first responders to help others experiencing life-threatening emergencies
DetailsCollective Intelligence
#RevolucionCR and DesafiosSP
Platforms for open policy making in Costa Rica and Mexico
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Safecast
Using citizen science to map radiation and air quality at a global scale
Details
Collective Intelligence
Ushahidi
Crowdmapping to inform responses in chaotic or disaster situations
Details
Collective Intelligence
Forum Jove BCN: Barcelona's Youth Forum
Citizens' assembly empowers Barcelona youth to develop recommendations for the city council
DetailsCollective Intelligence
Nuortenbudjetti: Helsinki's Youth Budget
Young people in Helsinki create and vote on youth-led projects
DetailsResearch Questions
The Equitable Engagement Lab aims both to solve problems and, at the same time, to advance participatory democracy using technology. We want to understand how to reinvent democracy, especially public engagement for the age of AI.
Our projects, writing and research addresses questions, such as:
- How does engagement improve problem solving and outcomes?
- Which platforms and processes are most effective at each stage of a problem-solving process?
- How can AI enable more robust forms of engagement at scale and at lower cost?
- How do we translate insights from online community engagement into actions?
- How can we increase equity and create more opportunities for the most vulnerable to participate in online engagement?
- How can we best combine the advantages of self-selection and representativeness in engagement processes?
- How can we use technology to understand what people know and can do so we can invite them to participate?