---
id: "worksheets:exercise/defining-tasks"
type: "Solving Public Problems worksheet"
title: "Defining the Tasks"
url: "https://worksheets.solvingpublicproblems.org/exercise/defining-tasks"
date: "2024-07-11"
summary: "An essential part of designing a collective intelligence and engagement process is to articulate clearly the tasks you want people to undertake. If you..."
source: "Solving Public Problems worksheets (worksheets.solvingpublicproblems.org), The GovLab and the Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Defining the Tasks

Exercise group: Developing Solutions with Collective Intelligence · Recommended exercise

## About this worksheet

An essential part of designing a collective intelligence and engagement process is to articulate clearly the tasks you want people to undertake. If you cannot describe what people need to do, engagement might not be appropriate. People have diverse skills and abilities, however, and there are many possible tasks you could assign from identifying new planets to coming up with good names and designs. Here are some additional examples of tasks:- Brainstorming and idea generation. For example, Estonia’s Rahvakogu process invited people to suggest ideas for how to reform the nation’s political system.- Budgeting. In Helsinki, the city’s government uses the open-source Decidim platform to undertake participatory budgeting.- Collective action. In the United States, United States Digital Response coordinates thousands of volunteer technologists and designers nationwide to work on civic tech projects in collaboration with local government.- Commenting. Since 1946, Americans have had the right to comment on draft regulations. Now they can do that online via http://regulations.gov.- Crowdfunding. Go Fund Me is a well-known platform for soliciting and tracking contributions. Space Hive is a UK-based platform that helps local communities coordinate contributions to pay for things like renovating the park or starting a community garden.- Data gathering. The Cities of Antwerp and Barcelona distribute strawberry plants to residents. People test the leaves as a way to gather data about air quality.- Data analysis. Kaggle is a commercial platform for crowdsourcing data-analysis projects.- Deliberation. In South Australia, the government asked residents to debate the merits of major issues like nuclear power both on- and offline.- Drafting. On Mudamos, Brazilians can draft proposals and invite signatures. With enough support, the legislature will review.- Predicting. Unanimous is a platform to help groups organize a prediction exercise.- Surveying. The proliferation of mobile phones has opened up new opportunities for conducting surveys in developing countries. Data about people’s lives can now be gathered much cheaper and faster. The World Bank’s Listening to Africa initiative is now collecting household data through mobile-phone surveys in African countries.- Tasks. Oxford University’s Galaxy Zoo and NASA asks distributed volunteers to label pictures of galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in an effort to categorize them.- Voting or making decisions. The crowd makes either binding or nonbinding and advisory opinions.

## Questions

1. What tasks are you asking people to perform? Note them here:

## PDF version

https://directus.theburnescenter.org/assets/250f0154-e4ff-4865-bd7b-408e554cbc12

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Original page: https://worksheets.solvingpublicproblems.org/exercise/defining-tasks · Licence: none stated