Bringing in the Citizens

The government only has so many resources to work on enormous, time-consuming projects—and so it has recently been bringing on interested citizens to help out. Using online tools, organizations have begun putting a premium on crowdsourcing and citizen science.

Along with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science—founded in 2012 and made up of about 200 coordinators from 40 federal agencies and departme