Crowdsourcing & Citizen Science

As highlighted in this Trends on Tuesday post, time spent on mobile phones—about 3 hours per day—has surpassed that of daily PC usage. This yields a significant opportunity for consumer interaction with federal agencies’ mobile apps, not just websites, and social media outlets. To take advantage of new opportunities for consumer

Zeshan Khan

Katie Steffy

Jun 12, 2014

In Crowdsourcing Competitions, Defining the Problem is Half the Battle

After leading a complex effort to crowdsource ideas to solve a problem facing your agency, the last thing you want to hear is that the innovative solutions you received don’t actually help remedy the issue. More than 20 federal innovators recently took part in

Tim Lowden

Apr 28, 2014

Defining Ideation in Challenge Competitions

There is some confusion about how “ideation” fits into challenge and prize competitions. Often, we hear from agencies that they would like to ask the public for ideas, to survey them on a specific question, or to request proposals in response to a

Tammi Marcoullier

Apr 18, 2014

HHS Uses Crowdsourcing in Booming mHealth Industry

The mobile health (mHealth) market is projected to become a $50 billion industry by 2020, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been actively contributing to the rise of the mHealth applications. The agency uses public prize competitions like the recent “Game On: HIV/STD Prevention Mobile Application Video Game Challenge” to crowdsource a

Tim Lowden

Mar 19, 2014

Crowdsource Ideas with New Competition Platform

Federal agencies now have the ability to create a challenge competition website that accepts submissions and allows public voting with a new, no-cost tool. The Challenge.gov team unveiled and demonstrated the capabilities of GSA’s new crowdsourcing and prize competition platform, Challenge.sites.usa.gov on a DigitalGov University webinar. The platform is now available for any

Tim Lowden

Mar 11, 2014

Double Digit Crowdsourcing Competitions Launch in February

This is a phenomenal month for federal challenge and prize competitions with 12 new programs launched in February. The challenge.gov platform usually averages four to six new challenges a month, so we’re excited to see the year start off with a big push to engage citizens in creative

Tammi Marcoullier

Feb 26, 2014

FEMA App adds ‘Disaster Reporter’ feature

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is taking the well-known slogan, “See something, say something,” to the crowd. Consider it more “See something, submit something.” Harnessing the power of citizen intelligence to understand and respond to disasters, FEMA in late 2013 launched a new feature in

Jan 16, 2014

Results Posted: 2012 Challenge Report

This week the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released its second comprehensive report detailing the use of federal challenge and prize competitions. Read it and you’ll find details about the fiscal benefits of more than 300 competitions implemented by 45 agencies. As the report

Tammi Marcoullier

Dec 20, 2013

Challenge.gov Named as Top 5 Finalist Harvard Innovation Award

Thanks to the tremendous work of challenge managers across federal government and the support of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, the Challenge.gov program at GSA has been named one of the top 5

Tammi Marcoullier

Nov 26, 2013

NOAA’s Release Mako App

Mobile Gov Experiences are agency stories about creating anytime, anywhere, any device government services and info. This entry is a story shared by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Release Mako App was created for fisherman to report their catch and releases of shortfin mako sharks in real time.

Apr 26, 2012

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