{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
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    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "Crowdsourcing Month: An Overview |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Crowdsourcing Month: An Overview",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/12/08/crowdsourcing-month-an-overview/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Crowdsourcing Month: An Overview","summary" : "This month we’ll be highlighting articles about crowdsourcing. These are the programs that use a variety of online mechanisms to get ideas, services, solutions, and products by asking a large, diverse crowd to contribute their expertise, talents, and skills. Among the mechanisms are hackathons, data jams, code-a-thons, prize competitions, workplace surveys, open ideation, micro-tasks or","date" : "2014-12-08T12:01:38-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"tammi-marcoullier" : "Tammi Marcoullier"},"topics" : {
        
            "challenges-and-prize-competitions" : "Challenges and prize competitions",
            "crowdsourcing-and-citizen-science" : "Crowdsourcing and citizen science",
            "open-government" : "Open government"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2014-12-08-crowdsourcing-month-an-overview.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2014/12/2014-12-08-crowdsourcing-month-an-overview.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/12/2014-12-08-crowdsourcing-month-an-overview.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/12/2014-12-08-crowdsourcing-month-an-overview.md","slug" : "crowdsourcing-month-an-overview","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/12/08/crowdsourcing-month-an-overview/","content" :"\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/12/600-x-400-Social-Network-Concept-scanrail-iStock-Thinkstock-186408823.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Social Network Concept\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis month we’ll be highlighting articles about crowdsourcing. These are the programs that use a variety of online mechanisms to get ideas, services, solutions, and products by asking a large, diverse crowd to contribute their expertise, talents, and skills.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong the mechanisms are hackathons, data jams, code-a-thons, prize competitions, workplace surveys, open ideation, micro-tasks or microwork, citizen science, crowdfunding, and more.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA brief look at history outlines a few notable prize competitions, crowdsourcing where solvers are given a task and winners are awarded a prize: The \u003ca href=\"http://www.xprize.org/?gclid=CIuy49ycrcICFY4-Mgod-GwANQ\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eX-Prize\u003c/a\u003e and its many iterations from personal space flight to unlocking the secrets of the ocean, Charles Lindburgh’s flight across the Atlantic for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.charleslindbergh.com/plane/orteig.asp\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eOrteig Prize\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e300 year-old Longitude Prize\u003c/a\u003e, launched by an act of Parliament in Britain to determine a ship’s longitude with the goal of reducing shipwrecks. Today the Longitude Prize is awarding $10 million (UK, British Sterling) for solutions to \u003ca href=\"http://longitudeprize.org/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eprevent antibiotic resistance\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"challenge--prize-competitions\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChallenge \u0026amp; Prize Competitions\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. government has Challenge.gov—the hub of publicly open competitions to solve technical, scientific, and creative problems. Today, there are more than $2.6 million in prizes available, including a competition to find a technical solution to retrieving and sharing data from bug boxes. The National Science Foundation launched the \u003ca href=\"http://beyondthebox.aibs.org/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eBeyond the Box challenge\u003c/a\u003e after extensive research and coming to the conclusion that they needed an innovation that would surpass what is commercially available.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince its launch in 2010, federal agencies have run more than 370 competitions and awarded more than $72 million in prizes along with valuable non-cash incentive prizes on the Challenge.gov platform. You can learn more about the program, winners and case studies by watching short, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9b-GuOJ3nFeJeAHAn3Z5opohjxIw8OC\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eon-demand videos\u003c/a\u003e or reading articles in the \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/topics/challenges-and-prize-competitions/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eChallenge categoy\u003c/a\u003e of this site.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NASA, Department of Defense, and Energy are the leading agencies for a number of challenges launched. Combined, these agencies comprise more than 65% of all federal challenge competitions. We’ve also seen huge success with \u003ca href=\"http://www2.epa.gov/innovation/prize-competitions\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eEPA’s myraid initiatives\u003c/a\u003e (like My Air, My Health), Federal Trade Commission’s Robocall Challenge, and USAID’s efforts for water desalination and an Ebola response.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"citizen-science\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCitizen Science\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCitizen science is the hot new topic in open crowdsourcing efforts. These programs are specific to science problems and often involve micro-tasks, like identifying organisms or changes in environment based on photos. In an example, the U.S. Geological Survey launched \u003ca href=\"http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/icoast/about.php\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eiCoast\u003c/a\u003e in 2014 to ask citizens to help identify changes to the coast from Super Storm Sandy and they’re received fantastic results to help analyze storm impact and coastal change probability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother success story is from National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which developed the \u003ca href=\"http://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCitizen Archivist Dashboard\u003c/a\u003e. Contributors tag and document transcription to archival records. More than 170,000 volunteers indexed 132 million names of the 1940 Census in only five months, which NARA could not have done alone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Office of Science and Technology Policy is putting forth an effort to \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/02/designing-citizen-science-and-crowdsourcing-toolkit-federal-government\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ecreate a toolkit for innovation\u003c/a\u003e which will involve the \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/communities/crowdsourcing-citizen-science/\"\u003eCitizen Science\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/communities/challenges-prizes/\" title=\"Challenges \u0026amp; Prizes Community\"\u003eChallenges \u0026amp; Prizes\u003c/a\u003e Communities of Practice. Some details:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCitizen science and crowdsourcing are powerful tools that can help federal agencies:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdvance and accelerate scientific research through group discovery and co-creation of knowledge. For instance, engaging the public in data collection can provide information at resolutions that would be difficult for federal agencies to obtain due to time, geographic, or resource constraints.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIncrease science literacy and provide students with skills needed to excel in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Volunteers in citizen science or crowdsourcing projects gain hands-on experience doing real science, and take that learning outside of the classroom setting.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eImprove delivery of government services with significantly lower resource investments.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eConnect citizens to the missions of federal agencies by promoting a spirit of open government and volunteerism.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"internal-ideation\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInternal Ideation\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWithin government agencies, there are departments that crowdsource solutions from employees. This \u003ca href=\"https://community.max.gov/pages/viewpage.action?title=Ideation+Community+of+Practice+%28Idea+Generation+Tools%29\u0026spaceKey=Planning\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eIdeation Community of Practice\u003c/a\u003e is open only to federal staff (.gov, .mil) and provides best practices, resources, and tools to help navigate the processes of asking for ideas, implementing solutions and managing awards and expectations with contributors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo of the most successful agency programs are at State Department and Department of Transportation; both have ongoing programs to engage staff. There are also occassional crowdsourcing efforts like GSA’s “Great Ideas Hunt;” launched to solicit innovative ideas. This year the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) developed an open-source technology platform that is used to manage the agency’s internal crowdsourcing efforts. The code is available on GitHub and the on-demand webinar gives an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQ24645LOE\u0026list=PLd9b-GuOJ3nFeJeAHAn3Z5opohjxIw8OC\u0026index=2\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eoverview of CFPB’s program\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe hope you enjoy the articles and that the work in crowdsourcing inspires you to get involved or launch your own initiative. If you have any questions about this theme or want to contribute a story about your agency crowdsourcing efforts, please contact us via \u003ca href=\"mailto:challenge@gsa.gov\"\u003eemail\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}