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Using crowdsourcing to make lobbying more transparent in the French National Assembly

Change Management

The partnership of Regards Citoyens and Transparence International France attempted to create a larger list of those seeking to influence by extracting information from the 1,174 official reports that Assembly members had published between July 2007 and July 2010 in relation to the preparation of legislation and government evaluation work. In some of these documents, Assembly members provided an appendix outlining all the formal hearings and meetings that took place in the preparation phase. However, such appendices were included in only 38% of reports. Nevertheless, the research team were able to create a dataset of 15,451 names from these documents. This already demonstrated a 160 fold increase in the number of identified individuals, compared to those in the official register.

The team then attempted to identify the organisation (and interests) that these individuals represented.  Sometimes this was actually recorded along with the individual’s name. However, many of the others were more difficult to trace – it would have been very time consuming and beyond the resources of the team to piece this information together.

Consequently, they decided to take a very different approach, mobilising the resources of the (online) community in a process of ‘crowdsourcing’, in which anyone with information could participate and link the identified names with their corresponding organisations more quickly.

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the act of delegating tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to an undefined large group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.

Watch this video explaining the process.

Using free software the team created a user-friendly application which enabled crowdsourcers to link each of the names to an organisation. Once three users had validated a named lobbyist as representing a particular organisation, this would be added to the team’s records.  The project team originally envisaged that piecing the information together using crowdsourcing would take several months. However, in reality the process was so successful that it took only 10 days, thanks to the contributions of 3,214 citizens.

Success factors

Simplicity – The layout of the online tool made it quick and easy to use, so that potential contributors were not put off by a technical interface. Also the tool didn’t require registration, which enabled fast and open participation.

The incentive of competition (gamification) – For those prepared to register,  the top 50 contributors to the process were identified in a ‘roll of honour’ and this competitive element ‘nudged’ citizens to try and link as many names as possible – with obvious benefits for the project

Keeping it fun and positive – The simplicity of the tool turned the hunt for names into a kind of ‘Easter egg hunt’, which was enjoyable for the participants. Also, the public-spirited nature of the activity, helping to shed light on the murky world of lobbying, was itself seen as highly rewarding.

The project therefore created a database of the 15,451 individuals, including their names, gender, function, and organisations. Although they had gathered these names from public records, the project team decided to publish only the names of the organisations, not the individuals, due to concerns about potential infringement of French privacy rights. In any case, the objective of the project was to create greater understanding of which organisations and interests were seeking to influence democratic processes.

The team then used software to refine the data and to categorise each organisation according to the interests they represented (e.g. corporation, union, NGO, and so on).  Initially they tried to make use  of the EU’s transparency registry but soon found that this was an inadequate, due to limitations in the Commission’s categorisation system. They therefore created their own typology, distinguishing 8 categories, divided into 28 subcategories, as follows:

The team then analysed the data – click the next page to learn about the outcomes.

About this case study
Main Contact

Myriam Savy

Transparence International France

Email :

myriam.savy@transparence-france.org

Regards Citoyens

Email:

contact@regardscitoyens.org

Frankie Hine-Hughes wrote this case study for Governance International on 22 March 2012.

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