IT Crowdsourcing for the State of California

http://ca_it.ideascale.com/

The California government has decided to open its doors to the opinions of the people. The state is looking for ideas on how to improve its IT infrastructure (hardware, software, apps, systems and processes).

The CTO of California, P.K. Agarwal, has challenged the people to find unique ways for the state to transfer its legacy systems to more modern technologies. Traditionally, the state would would put out an RFP to suppliers and wait for them to flood the gates, but the state thinks there could be better ways to find strategic partners.

Instead of using its own resources or hiring expensive consultants, the state is using a free resource...the crowd (note: I did not say, "the cloud"). Though this slightly innovative idea seems like it will attract some decent IT implementation ideas, the problem is in the analysis of all the submitted ideas. Even if an idea becomes "popular" or voted up by the site visitors, the state still needs to do an in depth analysis of the costs/benefits/alternatives...and do they have the right inside people to do this analysis?

In the end, I think that the ideas generated will be more innovative, but the government will still incur the same costs and take the same sluggish amount of time to implement anything.