COINs for Government: Collaborative Innovation Networks used in nascent US Government initiatives

With the growing success of internet based collaborative for profit ventures, including Innocentive, VenCorps, Threadless and many others, governments have begun to take notice. Recent public sector initiatives, including Open.gov, Peer 2 Patent, innovation.ED.gov amongst others, have begun to leverage collaborative internet media through similar means as their for profit cousins. On the basis of the Collective Intelligence Genome framework. which was developed to describe private sector ventures, this study reviewed the recent public sector initiatives launched by the American federal government. Our goal was to examine if, and how, the Genome construct would apply to not for profit ventures intimated by the U.S. federal government. Our findings show that while the model fits generally, some extension was required. Our findings make the case for an expanded genome framework with four new genes to describe public sector ventures. Our study concludes that with the use of these new genes it is possible to apply the Collective Intelligence Genome framework to all existing public sector ventures.