The purpose of this paper is to study the involvement of the “crowd” in designing public policies. To do so, we want to answer two research questions: the first one, whether crowdsourcing and crowdstorming are two different and separate phenomena or just two labels that can be applied to the same processes, the second one aiming to understand what is happening in the public sector in terms of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming adoption. We propose the following approach: first of all, providing definitions for crowdsourcing and crowdstorming in order to answer the first research question, secondly, providing an overview of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming experiences in the public sector,in order to answer the second research question. This methodology evidences the potential and the outcomes of applying crowdsourcing and crowdstorming practices in the public sector. In addition to this, our work sheds light on definitions and labels used in the literature to describe these phenomena. The outcome of the application of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming in the public sector is a greater involvement of the civil society in its relationship with the State. These practices could be successfully implemented where open government strategies are already in place in order to strengthen them. Future research could evaluate the social impact generated by the adoption of these strategies, as well as specific crowdstorming strategies for the public sector.