Federal Crowdsourcing Webinar Series, Episode 4: Open Opportunities

During this episode of the Federal Crowdsourcing Webinar Series, we met Lisa Nelson, engagement manager for the Open Opportunities program. She shared how agencies are crowdsourcing for talent to respond quickly to critical mission needs and changes, and how federal employees benefit from the experiential professional development offered.

Whether you’re looking to enhance existing skills, or seeking a more extensive career reboot without losing the benefits of your employment tenure, Open Opportunities is a matchmaker made for government. The program, now part of USAJOBS, provides an avenue for federal workers to “try on” new assignments and positions, network both within and outside of their current agencies, and achieve professional development goals during short-term engagements.

Think of like a mini detail, but with less paperwork. Feds can volunteer up to 20% of their time—with a manager’s approval—to work on short-term assignments.

In This Webinar, Learn How Open Opportunities Can Help…

• Advance your career by sharpening your skills or learning new ones.
• Break you from your routine, opening you to collaborations with others in different agencies.
• Expand your professional network and contacts within communities of innovators.

More About the Series

This is the fourth episode in the Federal Crowdsourcing Webinar Series, which airs the second Tuesday of each month. With each installment, we illuminate how U.S. agencies are reaching beyond their walls to source talent and enthusiasm, and can multiply the ideas and perspectives being brought to a particular issue.

Stay tuned for future airings:

• August 13: History By the People, with Lauren Algee, Library of Congress


And don’t miss these previous episodes:

• Episode 3: The Opportunity Project (June 2019), with Drew Zachary and Lorena Molina-Irizarry, U.S. Census Bureau
• Episode 2: Challenges and Prize Competitions (May 2019), with Jarah Meador, GSA, and Jessie Buerlein, HHS
• Episode 1: Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (April 2019), with John McLaughlin, NOAA, and Sophia B. Liu, USGS

This event was held over Zoom.

This talk was hosted by Challenge.gov. Managed by GSA, Challenge.gov serves as both the official listing of prize competitions across government, as well as a centralized platform for federal agencies to market their problem-solving events. The program also designs resources and training, which have helped more than 100 federal agencies run over 900 prize competitions with public participation since 2010.

For questions about this event, contact team@challenge.gov.