When Trudy Givens signed into the White House Save Award community and offered up a suggestion, she was one of thousands of users who were all working towards improving the government budget’s bottom line.
When her idea was selected as the 2010 winner of the Save Award, Givens learned that not only would she meet with the President to present her idea, she also found out that her submission would save the government $4 million every year. Her suggestion was simply to begin emailing the Federal Register.
Citizen Engagement is not just about transparency or participation. It presents a number of golden opportunities.
In a new IdeaScale white paper, we talk a lot about how digital innovation strategies can effect cost-savings and citizen buy-in. You’ll also find:
-examples of when citizen engagement has increased efficiency by millions of dollars
-how digital engagement can improve public sentiment and participation
-key industry statistics about the state of digital engagement
You can download the white paper here.
IdeaScale Blog 
Reblogged this on mystatedepartment.
Interesting reading, although there is a problem with one of the quotes:
“Citizens are more willing to pay taxes when they perceive that their preferences are properly taken into account by public institutions. Along these lines, the existing evidence suggests the existence of a causal relationship between citizen participation processes and levels of tax compliance.”
The quote is not by Torgler and Schneider as the paper indicates, but actually from this blog post which reviews the literature on the benefits of citizen engagement:
http://democracyspot.net/2012/11/24/the-benefits-of-citizen-engagement-a-brief-review-of-the-evidence/ which makes a review of the evidence
Thanks for the note – we’ve corrected the document to cite the blog. Great reading!