Case study: HM Treasury - The Spending Challenge

In 2010 the UK Government used Dialogue App – an online application used for open discussion – to engage with citizens and encourage them to submit ideas on how to spend money more effectively and reduce waste in order to address the budget deficit.


The first phase was limited to public sector staff, of which there were over six million. It was then opened up over a two month period to allow the rest of the public to participate in the debate.

63,000 ideas came from the public sector. Each suggestion was reviewed and categorised. A group of ‘Spending Challenge Champions' employed by the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, summarised all of the public sector ideas into 1,800 policy proposals. These were then reviewed to determine what ideas could most improve efficiency and savings.

The ideas submitted from the general public went through a moderation process. The 48,000 ideas that passed the screening process were posted on the Spending Challenge website where they were reviewed and rated by the public according to their potential to save money. Over 250,000 votes were passed at this stage, and the 2,000 top-rated ideas were further reviewed by government departments. Of these 2,000 top-rated ideas, 25 were picked to be a part of the Chancellor's Budget – for example reforming the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), and reducing tax fraud, avoidance and evasion.

The process took five months, at the end of which George Osborne presented the Budget, which included the Spending Challenge proposals. It cost the UK Government £19,300, and the ideas submitted were estimated to help save over £500 million.

Lessons learned:

  • Off-the-shelf, online applications can be purchased and applied to great effect – engaging with thousands of individuals.
  • Online crowdsourcing can require a process of screening the submitted material. It is crucial that this is done transparently – with a public explanation of why some inputs are being sifted out. This is one of the ways this example could be improved on if applied to devolution.
  • It is important that the exercise in engagement is not seen as tokenistic. The questions here did not give room to question the necessity of the savings themselves or much room for deliberating together on the issues at stake.
  • Space for deliberation and having choice over the ideas submitted would have given the process more legitimacy. For example, voting can be a useful way of narrowing down ideas, but online tools like DebateGraph can also allow participants to track and share with others their thinking process before voting.