Crowdsourcing during the COVID-19 pandemic not only encourages innovation but could potentially build public trust, enabling leaders to demonstrate that they value and desire citizen input. This commentary outlines existing crowdsourcing initiatives worldwide during the pandemic from governments, healthcare industry and technology companies. It then makes the case for how crowdsourcing has proved effective in the past despite some weaknesses. Organisations/ individuals seeking to effectively crowdsource during the pandemic should try the “participant-curator” model to establish ownership on the part of the participants and ultimately ensure success.

Jennifer Yang Hui is an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.