The UK’s Conservative Party has embraced the crowdsourcing concept, launching a competition with a £1 million (€1.1m) prize to find a developer to build a new online crowdsourcing platform.
The platform would be used by a future Conservative government to help it better engage the public in the policy-making process, shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement.
"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," said Hunt.
He added, "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."
The platform would be used by the Tories, if they win the next election, to publish a range of documents for public comment such as Green Papers.
"Too often policy has been ill thought through with disastrous consequences. When formulating and implementing policy, why should we not listen to the hundreds of thousands of experts out there?," Hunt said.