{
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    "title" : "The People and Teams That Power High-Impact Incentive Prizes |Digital.gov",
    "description": "The People and Teams That Power High-Impact Incentive Prizes",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/10/06/the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"The People and Teams That Power High-Impact Incentive Prizes","summary" : "Federal agencies have used prize competitions and challenges to drive competition and spark innovation for nearly a decade. In September 2010, as part of President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation [PDF], the Administration launched Challenge.gov, an online platform that enables federal agencies to engage civic","date" : "2015-10-06T11:10:55-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"jenn-gustetic" : "Jenn Gustetic","kelly-olson" : "Kelly Olson"},"topics" : {
        
            "challenges-and-prize-competitions" : "Challenges and prize competitions"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2015-10-06-the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2015/10/2015-10-06-the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/10/2015-10-06-the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/10/2015-10-06-the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes.md","slug" : "the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/10/06/the-people-and-teams-that-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes/","content" :"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/09/600-x-175-challenge-gov-5-years.jpg\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/09/600-x-175-challenge-gov-5-years.jpg\"\n    alt=\"The Challenge.gov 5 years of excellence logo.\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFederal agencies have used prize competitions and challenges to drive competition and spark innovation for nearly a decade. In September 2010, as part of President Obama’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/InnovationStrategy.pdf\"\u003eStrategy for American Innovation\u003c/a\u003e [PDF], the Administration launched \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/\"\u003eChallenge.gov\u003c/a\u003e, an online platform that enables federal agencies to engage civic innovators, entrepreneurs, and citizen scientists in prize competitions and challenges designed to help carry out agency missions and benefit society.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Administration is helping organize two events this week to celebrate the success of Challenge.gov, recognize the importance of public-sector prizes, and catalyze the next-generation of ambitious prizes. On Wednesday, October 7, the White House, the Case Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and Georgetown University will host an event titled “\u003cstrong\u003eAll Hands on Deck: Solving Complex Problems through Prizes and Challenges\u003c/strong\u003e” that will provide federal, state, and local government leaders and private-sector supporters with information and tools on how to effectively use incentive prizes to improve outcomes in addressing complex social, policy, and technological challenges in national priority areas. On Thursday, October 8, the General Services Administration will host a community of more than 300 prize practitioners to celebrate the great accomplishments of public-sector prizes at a \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/09/10/not-just-a-website-challenge-gov-enables-agencies-to-innovate-with-incentives/\"\u003efive-year anniversary event\u003c/a\u003e for Challenge.gov.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth of these events will showcase some of the more than 450 challenges that the federal government has conducted over the past 5 years to surface solutions from people and places across the country that would have been exceptionally difficult to discover through more traditional tools, like contracts and grants. A few examples of these people-powered prizes are:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFDA Food Safety\u003c/strong\u003e: The Food and Drug Administration launched the Food Safety prize competition in 2014 to encourage innovators to think of ideas that would quickly detect disease-causing organisms in food. The winning team from Purdue University, led by Professor \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/files/2015/09/FINAL-Food-Safety-09302015.pdf\"\u003eMichael Ladisch\u003c/a\u003e [PDF], developed a technology that concentrates Salmonella to detectable levels using automated microfiltration, making it possible to process samples in hours instead of days.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUltra High Speed Apps\u003c/strong\u003e: In September 2013, the National Institute of Justice offered a $75,000 prize to developers who could create an app that significantly improved public safety services. The winner, \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/files/2015/09/FINAL-UHS-09302015.pdf\"\u003eBruce Patterson\u003c/a\u003e [PDF] from Ammon, Idaho, created a school emergency screencast application that uses existing camera systems, ultra-high-speed bandwidth, and gunshot detection hardware to report fire immediately to first responders, and allows emergency personnel to identify an active shooter.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDesign by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT)\u003c/strong\u003e: Since 2012, the National Institutes of Health has challenged student teams every year to create solutions addressing pressing needs in biomedicine and technology for underserved populations. This year, a winning Washington University team, led by \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/files/2015/09/FINAL-DEBUT-09302015.pdf\"\u003eAndrew Brimer and Abby Cohen\u003c/a\u003e [PDF], designed a low-cost spirometer for diagnosing and monitoring respiratory diseases. The spirometer costs less than $10—orders of magnitude less than the $1000-$2000 usually required to detect such diseases.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDesal Prize\u003c/strong\u003e: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bureau of Reclamation challenged innovators around the world to create cost-effective, energy efficient, sustainable desalination technologies to provide water for people and crops. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/files/2015/09/FINAL-DESAL-09302015.pdf\"\u003ewinning Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team\u003c/a\u003e [PDF] designed a solar-powered system that removes salt from water with electricity and uses ultraviolet rays to disinfect the water, showing the potential for photovoltaic-powered electrodialysis to be a scalable, sustainable, and affordable desalination technology for rural areas of developing countries.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrize competitions and challenges have helped both public and private agencies solve an array of problems in pertinent national priority areas, such as energy, public safety, health, cybersecurity, and infrastructure. In addition to helping federal agencies and the public address these important issues, prize competitions and challenges also benefit participants and solvers by enabling them to launch their own companies, scale up their ideas, increase their pool of resources, or simply network. For example, Andrew Brimer and Abby Cohen—winners of the DEBUT challenge—were able to use their $10,000 winnings to start Sparo Labs, which now employs five full-time employees.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo find additional prize and challenge success stories, click \u003ca href=\"https://www.challenge.gov/success-stories/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. And to learn more about public-sector prizes, we encourage you to participate virtually in the October 7 and 8 events! Tune into the livestream of the \u003cstrong\u003eOctober 7 event\u003c/strong\u003e from \u003cstrong\u003e9:30AM-12:00AM ET\u003c/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://spi.georgetown.edu/prizes-live\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and register \u003ca href=\"\n\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e for information about the livestream of the \u003cstrong\u003eOctober 8 even\u003c/strong\u003et from \u003cstrong\u003e2:00PM-5:30PM ET\u003c/strong\u003e. Leading up to, during, and after these events, you can also follow \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/challengegov\"\u003e@ChallengeGOV\u003c/a\u003e and tweet using the hashtag \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/search?src=typd\u0026amp;q=%23publicprizes\"\u003e#PublicPrizes\u003c/a\u003e to share your questions and ideas, and to recognize prize and challenge solvers that you know.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eJenn Gustetic is Assistant Director for Open Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.\u003c/em\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eKelly Olson is the Director of the Challenge.gov program at the General Services Administration.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis article was \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/10/05/people-and-teams-power-high-impact-incentive-prizes\"\u003eoriginally published on the OSTP blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSign up for our \u003ca href=\"https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USHOWTO/subscriber/new\" target=\"_blank\"\u003edaily or weekly DigitalGov newsletter\u003c/a\u003e to receive more great content like this delivered to your inbox!\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}