Abstract
There is a new civic engagement tool emerging that is changing the way governments connect with citizens. Through interactive websites, this new tool, called citizensourcing, is uploading the traditional town hall online where citizens can engage with one another and their government anytime. The purpose of citizensourcing is to foster a collaborative relationship between citizens and their government to develop policies to improve their community. Because of its newness, little is known about citizensourcing and few governments are using it. This thesis studies the City of Sacramento’s citizensourcing tool, called Envision Sacramento, to understand how citizensourcing works and if it increases civic engagement, specifically citizen involvement in the policymaking process. The data came from an analysis of Envision Sacramento that examined the website against Nam (2011)’s criteria of strategies to collect the public’s wisdom and characteristics of an effective citizensourcing website. In addition, I interviewed three Sacramento City Councilmembers to gain the political perspective of how citizensourcing is utilized, and I interviewed Sacramento City’s Public Information Officer that oversees Envision Sacramento’s day-to-day operations to understand the administrative functions of it. I also administered a survey of likely Envision Sacramento users on how they experience the website. My research found that Envision Sacramento currently does not increase civic engagement, likely due to a lack of interaction with the Councilmembers. Additional staff would allow all citizens who use Envision Sacramento to receive feedback, which would also promote civic engagement. However, Envision Sacramento is still very new and will likely continue to develop; at the time of this study, it was in its fourth month of operation. Lessons from Envision Sacramento can be applied to citizensourcing broadly to show what works, what does not work, and the importance of a shared understanding of the goal of the project. Dedicated discussion spaces, a reward system, open participation, and maintaining a positive and constructive environment promotes participation. A lack of transparency, lack of feedback for users, not having enough variety of topics, and limiting what users can do on the website discourages participation. The main challenges encountered are insufficient amount of staff, recruiting and retaining users, and lack of elected official’s participation. A shared understanding of the purpose of the citizensourcing project is essential to its effectiveness in increasing civic engagement.